Edgar Lee Masters Quotes (197 Quotes)




    I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight,
    Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church,
    Disdaining me, not seeing me.

    Not knowing breath, though you tried so hard,
    With a heart that beat when you lived with me,
    And stopped when you left me for Life.



    And there is the silence of age,
    Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it
    In words intelligible to those who have not lived
    The great range of life.

    Take its meaning to heart:
    You too may walk, after the hills at Miller's Ford
    Seem no longer far away;
    Long after you see them near at hand,
    Beyond four miles of meadow;
    And after woman's love is silent,
    Saying no more: I will save you.


    For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
    Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
    Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.

    What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
    Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?


    And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest,
    Writers of music and tellers of stories
    Sit at his feet,
    And hear him sing of the fall of Troy.

    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.

    The pyramid of my life was nought but a dune,
    Barren and formless, spoiled at last by the storm.




    But I learned about life as well,
    And you who loiter around these graves
    Think you know life.


    They have chiseled on my stone the words:
    'His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him
    That nature might stand up and say to all the world,
    This was a man.

    Then I put him in a cage
    Where he lived many days cawing angrily at me
    When I offered him food.

    I beat the windows, shook the bolts,
    And hid me in a corner-
    And then she died and haunted me,
    And hunted me for life.

    In my last sickness I was in agony, but I was resolute
    And I cursed God for my suffering;
    Still He paid no attention to me;
    He left me alone, as He had always done.

    To be judged by you,
    The soul of me hidden from you,
    With its wound gangrened
    By love for a wife who made the wound,
    With her cold white bosom, treasonous, pure and hard,
    Relentless to the last, when the touch of her hand,
    At any time, might have cured me of the typhus,
    Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost.

    Those who first oppose a good work, seize it and make it their own, when the cornerstone is laid and memorial tablets are erected.

    I awoke one morning with the love of God
    Brimming over my heart, so I went to see Richard
    To settle the fence in the spirit of Jesus Christ.


    Some there were
    Who frowned not on the cup but loathed the rule
    Democracy achieved thereby, the freedom
    And lust of life it symbolized.


    And I say to all, beware of ideals,
    Beware of giving your love away
    To any man alive.

    There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife,
    Good in themselves, but evil toward each other:
    He oxygen, she hydrogen,
    Their son, a devastating fire.

    And then they arrested me as a witness,
    And I lost my train and staid in Spoon River
    To wage my battle of life to the end.

    And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition
    And desire which the Shadow,
    Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness,
    Could not extinguish.


    Your voice is very metallic this morning, Hortense Robbins --
    Almost like a guinea hen's!

    A mirror scratched reflects no image-
    And this is the silence of wisdom.


    the bait that you crave is in view:
    A woman with money you want to marry,
    Presitge, place, or power in the world.

    I ended up with forty acres;
    I ended up with a broken fiddle-
    And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories.

    Nothing in life is alien to you:
    I was a penniless girl from Summum
    Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River.

    The inner kernel is freedom,
    It is light, purity --
    I can no more,
    Find the goal or lose it, according to your vision.


    Ye aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown
    Who lies here with no stone to mark the place.


    We were married and lived together for seventy years,
    Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
    Eight of whom we lost
    Ere I had reached the age of sixty.


    True, I trailed back home, a broken failure,
    When Ralph disappeared in New York,
    Leaving me alone in the city --
    But life broke him also.


    Life all around me here in the village:
    Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
    Courage, constancy, heroism, failure--
    All in the loom, and oh what patterns!



    Related Authors


    William Wordsworth - Rabindranath Tagore - John Keats - Emily Dickinson - Robert Burns - Robert Browning - John Betjeman - Geoffrey Chaucer - Elizabeth Bishop - Edmund Spenser


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