Life poems
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Professor Newcomer
© Edgar Lee Masters
Everyone laughed at Col. Prichard
For buying an engine so powerful
That it wrecked itself, and wrecked the grinder
He ran it with.
On Fayrford Windowes
© William Strode
I know no paynt of poetry
Can mend such colourd Imag'ry
In sullen inke: yet Fayrford, I
May relish thy fayre memory.
Samuel Gardner
© Edgar Lee Masters
I who kept the greenhouse,
Lover of trees and flowers,
Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm,
Measuring its generous branches with my eye,
Harmon Whitney
© Edgar Lee Masters
Out of the lights and roar of cities,
Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River,
Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken,
The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt,
Isa Nutter
© Edgar Lee Masters
Doc Meyers said I had satyriasis,
And Doc Hill called it leucaemia --
But I know what brought me here:
I was sixty-four but strong as a man
William Jones
© Edgar Lee Masters
Once in a while a curious weed unknown to me,
Needing a name from my books;
Once in a while a letter from Yeomans.
Out of the mussel-shells gathered along the shore
Ralph Rhodes
© Edgar Lee Masters
All they said was true:
I wrecked my father's bank with my loans
To dabble in wheat; but this was true --
I was buying wheat for him as well,
Mickey M'Grew
© Edgar Lee Masters
It was just like everything else in life:
Something outside myself drew me down,
My own strength never failed me.
Why, there was the time I earned the money
If One Might Live
© Ethelwyn Wetherald
If one might live ten years among the leaves,
Tenonly tenof all a life's long day,
Elegy XX. He Compares His Humble Fortune With the Distress of Others
© William Shenstone
Why droops this heart with fancied woes forlorn?
Why sinks my soul beneath this wintry sky?
What pensive crowds, by ceaseless labours worn,
What myriads, wish to be as blessed as I!
Henry Tripp
© Edgar Lee Masters
The bank broke and I lost my savings.
I was sick of the tiresome game in Spoon River
And I made up my mind to run away
And leave my place in life and my family;
Integrity
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Immortal life is something to be earned,
By slow, self-conquest, comradeship with pain,
Dream Song 114: Henry in trouble whirped out lonely whines
© John Berryman
Henry in trouble whirped out lonely whines.
When ich when was ever not in trouble?
But did he whip out whines
afore? And when check in wif ales & lifelines
anyone earlier O?Some, now, Mr Bones,
many.I am fleeing double:
Edmund Pollard
© Edgar Lee Masters
I would I had thrust my hands of flesh
Into the disk-flowers bee-infested,
Into the mirror-like core of fire
Of the light of life, the sun of delight.
Russell Kincaid
© Edgar Lee Masters
In the last spring I ever knew,
In those last days,
I sat in the forsaken orchard
Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered
Ballad of Reading Gaol II
© Oscar Wilde
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
An Old Song Re-sung
© Padraic Colum
As I went down through Dublin city
At the hour of twelve of the night,
Harold Arnett
© Edgar Lee Masters
I leaned against the mantel, sick, sick,
Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm,
Weak from the noon-day heat.
A church bell sounded mournfully far away,
Mrs. Meyers
© Edgar Lee Masters
He protested all his life long
The newspapers lied about him villainously;
That he was not at fault for Minerva's fall,
But only tried to help her.
