Quotes from Edgar Lee Masters

This is life's sorrow: That one can be happy only where two are; And that our hearts are drawn to stars Which want us not.

My name used to be in the papers daily As having dined somewhere, Or traveled somewhere, Or rented a house in Paris, Where I entertained the nobility. I was forever eating or traveling, Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden. Now I am here to do honor To Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang. No one cares now where I dined, Or lived, or whom I entertained, Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden!

Viandante, amare è ritrovare la propria anima traverso l'anima dell'amato. Quando l'amato se ne stacca, allora tu l'hai perduta. È scritto: "Ho un amico, ma il mio dolore non ha amici".

Back of every soldier is a woman.

Rather a thousand times the county jail than to lie under this marble figure with wings and this granite pedestal bearing the words "pro patria." What do they mean anyway?

Suppose a boy steals an apple From the tray at the grocery store, And they all begin to call him a thief, The editor, minister, judge, and all the people – «A thief», «a thief», «a thief», wherever he goes. And he can't get work, and he can't get bread Without stealing it, why the boy will steal. It's the way people regard the theft of an apple That makes the boy what he is.

Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics, While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines.

Go to the good heart that is my husband, Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love: – Tell him that my love for you, no less than my love for him Wrought out my destiny – that through the flesh I won spirit, and through the spirit, peace. There is no marriage in heaven, But there is love.

KNOWLT HOHEIMER I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge. When I felt the bullet water my heart I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary, Instead of running away and joining the army. Rather a thousand times the country jail That to lie under his marble figure with wings, And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, «Pro Patria». What do they mean, anyway?

Henry got me with child, Knowing that I could not bring forth life Without losing my own. In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust.

And then I knew I was one of Life's fools, Whom only death would treat as the equal Of other men

Thou wert wise to chisel for me: «Taken from the evil to come».

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.

Remember the acorn; It does not devour other acorns.

Reckless of my mortality, Strengthen me to behold a face, To know the spirit of a beloved one Yet to endure, yet to dare!

Their spirits beat upon mine Like the wings of a thousand butterflies. I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating. I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes

As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours On the shore of the turbid Spoon With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish's burrow, Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead, First his waving antennae, like straws of hay, And soon his body, colored like soap-stone, Gemmed with eyes of jet. And you wondered in a trance of thought What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all.

But a man can never avenge himself on the monstrous ogre Life.

William and Emily There is something about Death Like love itself! If with some one with whom you have known passion, And the glow of youthful love, You also, after years of life, Together, feel the sinking of the fire, And thus fade away together, Gradually, faintly, delicately, As it were in each other's arms, Passing from the familiar room - That is a power of unison between souls Like love itself!

Now I, an under-tenant of the earth, can see That the branches of a tree Spread no wider than its roots. And how shall the soul of a man Be larger than the life he has lived?

The feeling that I was not worthy of her finished me.

The truth was this: I did not have the brains.

There is something about Death Like love itself! If with some one with whom you have known passion, And the glow of youthful love, You also, after years of life Together, feel the sinking of the fire, And thus fade away together, Gradually, faintly, delicately, As it were in each other's arms, Passing from the familiar room- That is a power of unison between souls Like love itself!

I sat under my cedar tree. My mate, the mother of them, was taken- I sat under my cedar tree, Till ninety years were tolled. O maternal Earth, which rocks the fallen leaf to sleep!