Edgar Lee Masters
Edgar Lee Masters
Edgar Lee Masterswas an American attorney, poet, biographer, and dramatist. He is the author of Spoon River Anthology, The New Star Chamber and Other Essays, Songs and Satires, The Great Valley, The Serpent in the Wilderness An Obscure Tale, The Spleen, Mark Twain: A Portrait, Lincoln: The Man, and Illinois Poems. In all, Masters published twelve plays, twenty-one books of poetry, six novels and six biographies, including those of Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Vachel Lindsay, and Walt Whitman...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth23 August 1868
CountryUnited States of America
the much-sought prize of eternal youth Is just arrested growth.
The tongue may be an unruly member-- But silence poisons the soul.
And I never started to plow in my life That some one did not stop in the road And take me away to a dance or picnic. I ended up with forty acres; I ended up with a broken fiddle— And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, And not a single regret.
In time you shall see Fate approach youIn the shape of your own image in the mirror;Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth,And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest,And you shall know that guest,And read the authentic message of his eyes.
Why, a moral truth is a hollow tooth Which must be propped with gold.
O maternal earth which rocks the fallen leaf to sleep!
To this generation I would say: Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty.
How shall the soul of a man be larger than the life he has lived?
Beware of the man who rises to power from one suspender.
Such phantom blossoms palely shining Over the lifeless boughs of Time.
The earth keeps some vibration going There in your heart, and that is you. And if the people find you can fiddle, why fiddle you must, for all your life.
The Typical American? He is sent to school Little or much, where he imbibes the rule Of safety first and comfort; in his youth He joins the church and ends the quest of truth.
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 for which music alone finds the word.
The mind sees the world as a thing apart, And the soul makes the world at one with itself. A mirror scratched reflects no image— And this is the silence of wisdom.