Edgar Lee Masters

A chaplain in the army, A chaplain in the prisons, An exhorter in Spoon River, Drunk with divinity, Spoon River— Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame, And myself to scorn and wretchedness. But why will you never see that love of women, And even love of wine, Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity, Reaches the ecstatic vision And sees the celestial outposts? Only after many trials for strength, Only when all stimulants fail, Does the aspiring soul By its own sheer power Find the divine By resting upon itself.

To be able to see every side of every question; To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long; To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose, To use great feelings and passions of the human family For base designs, for cunning ends, To wear a mask like the Greek actors— Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle, Bawling through the megaphone of big type: “This is I, the giant.” Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief, Poisoned with the anonymous words Of your clandestine soul. To scratch dirt over scandal for money, And exhume it to the winds for revenge, Or to sell papers, Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be, To win at any cost, save your own life. To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization, As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track And derails the express train. To be an editor, as I was. Then to lie here close by the river over the place Where the sewage flows from the village, And the empty cans and garbage are dumped, And abortions are hidden.

The sudden death of Eugene Carman Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month, And I told my wife and children that night. But it didn’t come, and so I thought Old Rhodes suspected me of stealing The blankets I took and sold on the side For money to pay a doctor’s bill for my little girl. Then like a bolt old Rhodes accused me, And promised me mercy for my family’s sake If I confessed, and so I confessed, And begged him to keep it out of the papers, And I asked the editors, too. That night at home the constable took me And every paper, except the Clarion, Wrote me up as a thief Because old Rhodes was an advertiser And wanted to make an example of me. Oh! well, you know how the children cried, And how my wife pitied and hated me, And how I came to lie here.

Their spirits beat upon mine Like the wings of a thousand butterflies. I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating. I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes, And when they turned their heads; And when their garments clung to them, Or fell from them, in exquisite draperies. Their spirits watched my ecstasy With wide looks of starry unconcern. Their spirits looked upon my torture; They drank it as it were the water of life; With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes, The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt, Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight. And they cried to me for life, life, life. But in taking life for myself, In seizing and crushing their souls, As a child crushes grapes and drinks From its palms the purple juice, I came to this wingless void, Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine, Nor the rhythm of life are known.

I am Minerva, the village poetess, Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk, And all the more when “Butch” Weldy Captured me after a brutal hunt. He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers; And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up, Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice. Will some one go to the village newspaper, And gather into a book the verses I wrote?— I thirsted so for love I hungered so for life!

After I got religion and steadied down They gave me a job in the canning works, And every morning I had to fill The tank in the yard with gasoline, That fed the blow-fires in the sheds To heat the soldering irons. And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it, Carrying buckets full of the stuff. One morning, as I stood there pouring, The air grew still and seemed to heave, And I shot up as the tank exploded, And down I came with both legs broken, And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs. For someone left a blow—fire going, And something sucked the flame in the tank. The Circuit Judge said whoever did it Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so Old Rhodes’ son didn’t have to pay me. And I sat on the witness stand as blind As Jack the Fiddler, saying over and over, “I didn’t know him at all.”

If a man could bite the giant hand That catches and destroys him, As I was bitten by a rat While demonstrating my patent trap, In my hardware store that day. But a man can never avenge himself On the monstrous ogre Life. You enter the room—that’s being born; And then you must live—work out your soul, Aha! the bait that you crave is in view: A woman with money you want to marry, Prestige, place, or power in the world. But there’s work to do and things to conquer— Oh, yes! the wires that screen the bait. At last you get in—but you hear a step: The ogre, Life, comes into the room, (He was waiting and heard the clang of the spring) To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese, And stare with his burning eyes at you, And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you, Running up and down in the trap, Until your misery bores him.

When my moustache curled, And my hair was black, And I wore tight trousers And a diamond stud, I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick. But when the gray hairs began to appear— Lo! a new generation of girls Laughed at me, not fearing me, And I had no more exciting adventures Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil, But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs Of other days and other men. And time went on until I lived at Mayer’s restaurant, Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy, Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . . There is a mighty shade here who sings Of one named Beatrice; And I see now that the force that made him great Drove me to the dregs of life.