 Poetry: May 18, 2022 Issue [#11368] |
This week: Edgar Lee Masters Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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Rain In My Heart
by Edgar Lee Masters
There is a quiet in my heart
Like on who rests from days of pain.
Outside, the sparrows on the roof
Are chirping in the dripping rain.
Rain in my heart; rain on the roof;
And memory sleeps beneath the gray
And the windless sky and brings no
dreams
Of any well remembered day.
I would not have the heavens fair,
Nor golden clouds, nor breezes
mild,
But days like this, until my heart
To loss of you is reconciled.
I would not see you. Every hope
To know you as you were has
ranged.
I, who am altered, would not find
The face I loved so greatly changed.
Silence
by Edgar Lee Masters
I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence of the sick
When their eyes roam about the room.
And I ask: For the depths,
Of what use is language?
A beast of the field moans a few times
When death takes its young.
And we are voiceless in the presence of realities --
We cannot speak.
A curious boy asks an old soldier
Sitting in front of the grocery store,
"How did you lose your leg?"
And the old soldier is struck with silence,
Or his mind flies away
Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg.
It comes back jocosely
And he says, "A bear bit it off."
And the boy wonders, while the old soldier
Dumbly, feebly lives over
The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon,
The shrieks of the slain,
And himself lying on the ground,
And the hospital surgeons, the knives,
And the long days in bed.
But if he could describe it all
He would be an artist.
But if he were an artist there would be deeper wounds
Which he could not describe.
There is the silence of a great hatred,
And the silence of a great love,
And the silence of an embittered friendship.
There is the silence of a spiritual crisis,
Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured,
Comes with visions not to be uttered
Into a realm of higher life.
There is the silence of defeat.
There is the silence of those unjustly punished;
And the silence of the dying whose hand
Suddenly grips yours.
There is the silence between father and son,
When the father cannot explain his life,
Even though he be misunderstood for it.
There is the silence that comes between husband and wife.
There is the silence of those who have failed;
And the vast silence that covers
Broken nations and vanquished leaders.
There is the silence of Lincoln,
Thinking of the poverty of his youth.
And the silence of Napoleon
After Waterloo.
And the silence of Jeanne d'Arc
Saying amid the flames, "Blessed Jesus" --
Revealing in two words all sorrows, all hope.
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.
And there is the silence of the dead.
If we who are in life cannot speak
Of profound experiences,
Why do you marvel that the dead
Do not tell you of death?
Their silence shall be interpreted
As we approach them.
On August 23, 1868 in Garnett, Kansas, Hardin Masters and his wife Emma Dexter, welcomed son Edgar Lee Master into the world. Hardin was in Kansas for a short time opening up a law office before moving his family back to Illinois. Master grew up in western Illinois on farmland close to his grandparents. He was educated in the public school system in Petersburg and Lewistown. During his last years of school, he worked as a newspaper printer after class. Upon completing his secondary education he went to an academy school hoping to gain admission to Knox College. Instead of going to college, Masters started working for his father in law. After working with his father he became a bill collector for a bit in Chicago before opening a law partnership with Kickham Scanla. While working in law, he wrote a series of essays and plays on his Populist views under the pseudonym Dexter Wallace.
In 1898 Masters married Helen M. Jenkins, a daughter of a Chicago lawyer. The couple had three children together. In 1903, Masters joined Clarence Darrow's law firm. While there he defended the poor. During this time he continued writing some dozen plays and books of poems mostly political. In 1908 he started having extra marital affairs. These affairs over the next three years, started causing problems with Masters at work. He left Darrow and started a practice of his own in 1911. In 1914 Masters began composing a series of poems about his childhood. He published these poems under the pseudonym Webster Ford in Reedy's Mirror. These poems would be the start of his book "Spoon River Anthology" published in 1915. Masters drew inspiration from the kind-hearted people he knew in his youth and his imagination to compose "The Genesis of Spoon River" published in 1933. Masters wrote and published poems, novels and essays for nearly thirty years. None of his other writings had the impact or success of "Spoon River Anthology."
During the years Masters had the most success professionally, his personal life was less fortunate. He spent a lot of time balancing two jobs, one as a writer and his law career. His marriage fell apart and the couple ended up divorcing in 1923. After his divorce he moved to New York and continued practicing law for several years. In 1926, Masters married his second wife Ellen Coyne. She was a school teacher and often spent months away at different teaching positions. Upon Masters retirement he moved with Ellen to Pennsylvania where she took a teaching position. In the 1940's he received several literary awards for his decades of writing, including Poetry Society of America medal, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. Edgar Lee Masters died on March 5, 1950 in Melrose, Pennsylvania and is buried in Oakland Cemetery in Petersburg, Illinois.
The Hill
By Edgar Lee Masters
Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,
The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?
All, all are sleeping on the hill.
One passed in a fever,
One was burned in a mine,
One was killed in a brawl,
One died in a jail,
One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife —
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith,
The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one? —
All, all are sleeping on the hill.
One died in shameful child-birth,
One of a thwarted love,
One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,
One of a broken pride, in the search for heart's desire,
One after life in far-away London and Paris
Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag —
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,
And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,
And Major Walker who had talked
With venerable men of the revolution? —
All, all are sleeping on the hill.
They brought them dead sons from the war,
And daughters whom life had crushed,
And their children fatherless, crying —
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Where is Old Fiddler Jones
Who played with life all his ninety years,
Braving the sleet with bared breast,
Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,
Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?
Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,
Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove,
Of what Abe Lincoln said
One time at Springfield.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
Beyond ashes
There is no one more foolish
than me, if I think you are gone.
No, you are with me every minute of the day,
a fact that will last my whole life long.
Your charming smile says, “live and be happy.”
You are with me, I sense your presence
though I can’t explain how or where.
Every dawn brings a feeling of arising together,
a feeling that enlivens my days and nights.
The love, the fun, and those precious moments we shared
lend an ease to my days to fare forward free and fine.
Remember dear, when we toured that mountain kingdom
where the winds were gentle and the clouds whispered,
those walking tours along wide river, the woods, camping
by the creek that flows down the mountain path?
Golden memories with the fresh flavor of sun kissed
banks of floral beauty, reflect your clear and comely
translucence in the mirror of my joyous heart.
A powerful inherent feeling assures me, dear,
that our love lasts beyond the mundane, beyond ashes.
Honorable mention:
"Invalid Entry"
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