Edgar Lee Masters

Trainor the druggist

ONLY the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist,
What will result from compounding
Fluids or solids.
And who can tell
How men and women will interact
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On each other, or what children will result?
There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife,
Good in themselves, but evil toward each other:
He oxygen, she hydrogen,
Their son, a devastating fire.
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I Trainor, the druggist, a mixer of chemicals,
Killed while making an experiment,
Lived unwedded.
Margaret fuller slack
I WOULD have been as great as George Eliot
But for an untoward fate.
For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit,
Chin resting on hand, and deep-set eyes
Gray, too, and far-searching.
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But there was the old, old problem:
Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity?
Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me,
Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel,
And I married him, giving birth to eight children,
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And had no time to write.
It was all over with me, anyway,
When I ran the needle in my hand
While washing the babys things,
And died from lock-jaw, an ironical death.
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Hear me, ambitious souls,
Sex is the curse of life!
Lucinda Matlock
I went to the dances at Chandlerville, And played snap-out at Winchester. One time we
changed partners, Driving home in the moonlight of middle June, And then I found
Davis. 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. I spun, I
wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick, I made the garden, and for holiday Rambled
over the fields where sang the larks, And by Spoon River gathering many a shell, And
many a flower and medicinal weed-- Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green
valleys. At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all, And passed to a sweet repose. What
is this I hear of sorrow and weariness, Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters, Life is too strong for you-- It takes life to love Life.
Edwin Robinson
OLD Eben Flood, climbing along one night

Over the hill between the town below

And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:
Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more;
The bird is on the wing, the poet says,
And you and I have said it here before.
Drink to the bird. He raised up to the light
The jug that he had gone so far to fill,
And answered huskily: Well, Mr. Flood,
Since you propose it, I believe I will.

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Alone, as if enduring to the end

A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn,
He stood there in the middle of the road
Like Rolands ghost winding a silent horn.
Below him, in the town among the trees,
Where friends of other days had honored him,
A phantom salutation of the dead
Rang thinly till old Ebens eyes were dim.

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Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child

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Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most things break;
And only when assured that on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men
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Assuredly did not, he paced away,
And with his hand extended paused again:
Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this
In a long time; and many a change has come
To both of us, I fear, since last it was
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We had a drop together. Welcome home!
Convivially returning with himself,
Again he raised the jug up to the light;
And with an acquiescent quaver said:
Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.
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Only a very little, Mr. Flood
For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do.
So, for the time, apparently it did,
And Eben evidently thought so too;
For soon amid the silver loneliness
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Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,

Secure, with only two moons listening,

Until the whole harmonious landscape rang
For auld lang syne. The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered; and the song being done,
He raised again the jug regretfully
And shook his head, and was again alone.
There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago.

Amy Lowell
Venus Transiens
Tell me,
Was Venus more beautiful
Than you are,
When she topped
The crinkled waves,
Drifting shoreward
On her plaited shell?
Was Botticellis vision
Fairer than mine;
And were the painted rosebuds
He tossed his lady
Of better worth
Than the words I blow about you
To cover your too great loveliness
As with a gauze
Of misted silver?
For me,
You stand poised
In the blue and buoyant air,
Cinctured by bright winds,
Treading the sunlight.
And the waves which precede you
Ripple and stir
The sands at my feet.

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