All Poems

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Jack McGuire

© Edgar Lee Masters

They would have lynched me
Had I not been secretly hurried away
To the jail at Peoria.
And yet I was going peacefully home,

The Shepheardes Calender: Januarie

A Shepeheards boye (no better doe him call)
when Winters wastful spight was almost spent,
All in a sunneshine day, as did befall,
Led forth his flock, that had been long ypent.
So faynt they woxe, and feeble in the folde,
That now vnnethes their feete could them vphold.

The Spooniad

© Edgar Lee Masters

[The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River, planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but unfortunately did not live to complete even the first book. The fragment was found among his papers by William Marion Reedy and was for the first time published in Reedy's Mirror of December 18th, 1914.]
Of John Cabanis' wrath and of the strife
Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat
Who led the common people in the cause

The Emigrant Mother

© William Wordsworth

Once having seen her clasp with fond embrace
This Child, I chanted to myself a lay,
Endeavouring, in our English tongue, to trace
Such things as she unto the Babe might say:
And thus, from what I heard and knew, or guessed,
My song the workings of her heart expressed.

Chicago Weather

© Eugene Field

To-day, fair Thisbe, winsome girl!

Strays o'er the meads where daisies blow,

William H. Herndon

© Edgar Lee Masters

There by the window in the old house
Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley,
My days of labor closed, sitting out life's decline,
Day by day did I look in my memory,

Here They Lie

© Robert Graves

Here they lie who once learned here
All that is taught of hurt or fear;
Dead, but by free will they died:
They were true men, they had pride.

Voltaire Johnson

© Edgar Lee Masters

Why did you bruise me with your rough places
If you did not want me to tell you about them?
And stifle me with your stupidities,
If you did not want me to expose them?

The Linnet's Nest

© Erasmus Darwin

The busy birds, with nice selection, cull

Soft thistle-down, gray moss, and scatter'd wool;

Le Roy Goldman

© Edgar Lee Masters

"What will you do when you come to die,
If all your life long you have rejected Jesus,
And know as you lie there, He is not your friend?"
Over and over I said, I, the revivalist.

The Widow of Nain

© George MacDonald

Forth from the city, with the load
That makes the trampling low,
They walk along the dreary road
That dust and ashes go.

Jonathan Swift Somers

© Edgar Lee Masters

After you have enriched your soul
To the highest point,
With books, thought, suffering, the understanding of many personalities,
The power to interpret glances, silences,

The Evening Company

Within the sitting-room, the company
Had been increased in number. Two or three
Young couples had been added: Emma King,
Ella and Mary Mathers--all could sing
Like veritable angels--Lydia Martin, too,
And Nelly Millikan.--What songs they knew!--

Rosaline

Thou look'dst on me all yesternight,

Thine eyes were blue, thy hair was bright

Mrs. Williams

I was the milliner
Talked about, lied about,
Mother of Dora,
Whose strange disappearance

Benjamin Painter

Together in this grave lie Benjamin Painter, attorney at law,
And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend.
Down the grey road, friends, children, men and women,
Passing one by one out of life, left me till I was alone