{"id":44,"date":"2015-08-25T03:12:03","date_gmt":"2015-08-25T03:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teaching.lfhanley.net\/eng528f15\/?page_id=44"},"modified":"2016-09-15T15:54:45","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T15:54:45","slug":"edgar-lee-masters","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/teaching.lfhanley.net\/eng528fa16\/texts\/edgar-lee-masters\/","title":{"rendered":"Edgar Lee Masters"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/a>
from Spoon River Anthology<\/span> (1915)<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Petit, the Poet”<\/strong><\/p>\n

SEEDS in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
\nTick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel–
\nFaint iambics that the full breeze wakens–
\nBut the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
\nTriolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
\nBallades by the score with the same old thought:
\nThe snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
\nAnd what is love but a rose that fades?
\nLife all around me here in the village:
\nTragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
\nCourage, constancy, heroism, failure–
\nAll in the loom, and oh what patterns!
\nWoodlands, meadows, streams and rivers–
\nBlind to all of it all my life long.
\nTriolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
\nSeeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,
\nWhile Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Seth Compton”<\/strong><\/p>\n

WHEN I died, the circulating library
\nWhich I built up for Spoon River,
\nAnd managed for the good of inquiring minds,
\nWas sold at auction on the public square,
\nAs if to destroy the last vestige
\nOf my memory and influence.
\nFor those of you who could not see the virtue
\nOf knowing Volney’s “Ruins” as well as Butler’s “Analogy”
\nAnd “Faust” as well as “Evangeline,”
\nWere really the power in the village,
\nAnd often you asked me
\n“What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?”
\nI am out of your way now, Spoon River,
\nChoose your own good and call it good.
\nFor I could never make you see
\nThat no one knows what is good
\nWho knows not what is evil;
\nAnd no one knows what is true
\nWho knows not what is false.<\/p>\n

“Lucinda Matlock”<\/strong><\/p>\n

I WENT to the dances at Chandlerville,
\nAnd played snap-out at Winchester.
\nOne time we changed partners,
\nDriving home in the moonlight of middle June,
\nAnd then I found Davis.
\nWe were married and lived together for seventy years,
\nEnjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
\nEight of whom we lost
\nEre I had reached the age of sixty.
\nI spun,
\nI wove,
\nI kept the house,
\nI nursed the sick,
\nI made the garden, and for holiday
\nRambled over the fields where sang the larks,
\nAnd by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
\nAnd many a flower and medicinal weed–
\nShouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
\nAt ninety–six I had lived enough, that is all,
\nAnd passed to a sweet repose.
\nWhat is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
\nAnger, discontent and drooping hopes?
\nDegenerate sons and daughters,
\nLife is too strong for you–
\nIt takes life to love Life.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Spoon River Anthology (1915)   “Petit, the Poet” SEEDS in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel– Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens– But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof. Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, Ballades by the score with the same old thought: The snows<\/p>\n