Edgar Lee Masters

“ What are we, the living, beside you the dead?
We of daily hunger, daily food, daily ablutions,
The daily rising and lying down,
Waking and sleep;
The daily care of the body's needs;
And daily desire to pass the gift of life;
And daily fears of the morrow to come;
And daily pains for things that are gone;
And daily longing for things that fly us;
And sorrow that follows wherever we go;
[Pg 7]
And love that mocks us, and peace that breaks,
And shame that tracks us, and want that gnaws. ”

“ THE WEDDING FEAST
Said the chief of the marriage feast to the groom,
Whence is this blood of the vine?
Men serve at first the best, he said,
And at the last, poor wine.
Said the chief of the marriage feast to the groom,
When the guests have drunk their fill
They drink whatever wine you serve,
Nor know the good from the ill.
How have you kept the good till now
When our hearts nor care nor see?
Said the chief of the marriage feast to the groom,
Whence may this good wine be?
Said the chief of the marriage feast, this wine
Is the best of all by far. ”

“ And from Tyre to Athens beheld an epiphany of fire:
The flesh fade flower-like while the soul kept breath
Beyond the body's death,
Even as nature which revives;
In consummation of the faith
That Tammuz, the Soul, survives,
And is not sacrificed
In the darkness where the dust
Lies on the bolt and on the floor,
And passes not behind the iron door
Save it be followed by the lover Christ,
The Ishtar of the faithful trust,
Who knocks and says: "This soul, which winter knew
In life, in death at last,
Finds spring through me, and waters fresh and blue. ”

“ Who mouths a heaven that fools us,
And curses the olive and vine,
And the smiles of the lyric nine.
Gods are they, hard and full of wrath
Who drive us on the unintelligible path.
Gods are they, and unreckoning of their work
Too puerile or despotic, or with feet
That drip blood on a mercy seat.
They nerve our hands with hatred's dirk,
Or weaken us with poison sweet.
Drug us to mumble this is life, who feel
In our delirium, no less, that life
Is an ocean that breaks the grist stones and the wheel ”

“ Guests at the wedding feast of life,
Drinkers of the wine made by Jesus,
Worshipers of fire and of God,
Who made the grape,
And filled the veins of His legitimate children
With ethereal flame—
We the lovers of life in unknown places
Shall taste of ancient wine,
And put flowers in golden vases,
And open precious books of song,
And look upon dreaming Buddhas,
And marble masks of genius.
We shall hear the sound of stringed instruments,
Voicing the dreams of great spirits. ”

“ She gave her heart's half measure,
All she had, for all your soul's full treasure.
What's the half to keep, could you achieve it?
What your treasure if you could retrieve it?
Never more shall you again bestow it ...
Now you have a song if you're a poet.
Now you're ever dumb if song's denied you,
You shall be more dumb than all beside you,
While your soul is shaken by its torrents—
Dante songless in a Dante Florence.
Age shall not make strong, nor deeper learning.
Grief grows clearer with your eye's discerning.
Pass the years, but oh the soil grows faster—
Richer for the roots of your disaster. ”

“ But if you felt and saw love, agony,
As Shakspeare knew them you would quickly die.
There is no tragedy like the gift of song,
It keeps you mortal but demands you strong;
It gives you God's eyes blurred with human tears,
And crowns a thousand lives in fifty years. ”

“ I think of her a cookin' for harvesters in summer;
I think of her a lyin' there, a dyin' there, the neighbors
Who came in to fan her and how she never murmured;
And then I seem to grow number and number,
And something in me says:
Why didn't Jesus help her for to die,
Why did Jesus always pass her by,
Let her break her health down as I was growing poorer,
Let her lie and suffer with no medicine to cure her,
I wouldn't treat a stray dog as Jesus acted to her.
If these are devil words, I'm a child of the devil.
And this is why I'm dumb
As the spirit and the bride say come! ”

“ Swine-devils had him in their clutch and drew
His baffled spirit. How significant,
As they were legion and so named, the point
Is, life bewildered, torn in greed and wrath.
Desire puts a spirit out of joint.
Swine-devils are for swine, who have no path. ”

“ And curdled in the process, and who hate me
For taking men and women as they are,
Talk to create belief for self and others.
Denial makes philosophies, religions.
Indulgence leaves one sane, objectifies
The eternal womanly, freeing brain of fumes,
To work with master hands with love and life.
The story rose, however.
Then comes Shelley
Bearing a letter from his wife, denying
That Claire and Shelley loved, you understand—
By the flesh. Sweet, was it not? Naïve!
This letter I should hand the Hoppners, who
Believed the story, and who held a place
Persuasive touching poor Allegra. ”

“ When my heart trembled, stopped as when a horse
Braces its terrored feet to keep from plunging
Over the precipice. Farewell! Farewell!
I know to say, and turn, and pass my way.
Why! For that matter, even now behold!
Do I feel less than Shelley would in this?
I leave the Countess for the war in Greece.
What's done is done. What's lived is lived. Come, Doctor,
Let's practice with the pistols. Mother of God,
What is this thing called Life? ”

“ Of darkness, sorrow and pain.
After the wedding feast is labor,
Suffering, sickness, death,
And so I make you wine for the wedding,
Said Jesus of Nazareth.
My heart is with you, said Jesus of Nazareth,
As the grape is one with the vine. ”

“ Of continents and isles; your heart incline
Toward our turbulent blood from many climes,
Worships and times.
Lift from our necks the brass and jeweled torque
Of restless zealots and of idiot mouths;
The locusts swarm, the land is cursed with drouths,
Bring rain and dew,
Plant olive trees,
Set on our hills the emblem of the vine;
Bring to our hearts the lofty purities
Of song and laughter, wisdom, and renew
Temples of beauty and academies! ”

“ Not to be named, the god of life and yearning,
Osiris of the mysteries,
Who springs from the waters ever returning.
At the gate of the Lord's house,
Ezekiel, the prophet, beheld the abomination of Babylon:
Women with sorrow on their brows
In lamentation, weeping
For the bereavement of Ishtar and for Tammuz sleeping,
And for the summer gone. ”

“ She says to self over and over,
"God is love! God is love!
All is well."
And she wins a little oblivion,
Through saying "God is love,"
From the truth in her heart which cries:
"Love is life,
Love is a lover,
And love is God!" ”

“ So Shelley and his wife,
Mary, the planet of an hour, since quenched,
Conceive I keep Allegra where she is
From wounded pride, or pique. Hell fire! They think
I'm hurt for thinking Claire and Shelley join
Their lips in love, and masque my jealousy
By just this pose of morals, make reprisal
Under a lying flag, and keep Allegra
To punish Claire and sate my jealousy
By this hypocrisy—It makes me laugh. ”

“ Who in the devil has love or luck?
One thing is true, there's rapture and pain.
As for the rest, I pass the buck.
Something occurs, and God knows what,
Tyrannosaurus fades like a ghost.
That throws a light on our little lot,
Love that is won, love that is lost. ”

“ Like thumbs, vestigial stubs—but there you sit.
Thank God the aeroplane came on to help,
And wipe out distance, for you find at last
Distance is tragedy, terrifies the soul
With space which must be mastered by the soul. ”

“ The organic national praise and Shelley lost,
And Byron lost it—Southey the sycophant,
Wordsworth the dull adherent, renegade—
These two against these spirits who came here
To sing of Liberty—and look at me,
A wanderer and a poor, rejected man,
While usurers, slave owners rule the land,
And the cities reek with hypocrites, who step
On Freedom and on Beauty, are rewarded,
Praised, fed and honored for it. ”

“ Forefront your thief-self as your deft
And dominant genius, or the ear
Which tortured you?
Would you not say,
Music intrigues me night and day?
My soul is the musician's. First
In my soul's love is music. Would
You falsify to keep your good?
Deny your theft, or put the worst
Construction on your soul, obscure
Thereby your soul's investiture
[Pg 106]
Of music's gift and music's lure?
If you were flame you would pretend
What you would fain be to the end,
Keep your good name and keep as well
The violin. ”

“ I shall give you henbane for the poison of defeated love;
I shall kiss your dead lips, Beloved.
Then I shall drink, too.
Our bodies shall feed the worms
As these June days have fed my writhing sorrow,
Beloved murderer of my June! ”

“ Your hand across my brow, our souls go out
To meet each other, leave as wilted grass
Our emptied bodies. Then we grow devout,
And kneel and pray together for the gift
Of love from heaven, and to banish doubt
Of change or faithlessness. ”

“ Of quiet, gate-toothed, crook-nosed psychopaths,
The foul-breathed, thick-lipped onanists who filled
The seminary, stared at me to see
How I learned Sanscrit, could defend and rout
The atheistic speculations. Well,
What I enjoyed most was to get a crowd
Of celibates and talk of chastity,
And get them in a glow, and say to them:
The mind is fortified by abstinence,
The spirit clarified and lifted up—
I got a thrill somehow. But all the time
I knew a girl named Ella. ”

“ No gift of speech, yet winning golden speech;
No gift of writing, writing books, no less
Of our America to thrill and live—
If, as I say, we let you state your case
Against you as you do, there yet remains
This over-mind, and that is what—a gift
Of genius or of what? By George, he says,
What are you, a theosophist? I don't know.
I know some men achieve a single thing,
Like courage, charity, in this incarnation;
You have achieved some twenty things. I think
That this is going some for a man whose gifts
Are commonplace and nothing else. ”

“ What is a man's soul to a drove of hogs?
Which being lost, men play the hypocrite
And make the owner chief in the affair.
You banish me for witchcraft. I submit.
Work of this kind awaits me everywhere.
And into swine where better they belong,
Casting the swinish devils out of men
The devils have their place at last, and then
The man is healed who had them—where's the wrong
Save to the owner? ”

“ Through India and Greece
Shall find us wings for life and for increase
Of living, and shall battle down the hell
Whose fires still smolder and profane.
Life and the human heart
In living must become the aeroplane ”

“ Of land and water us between?
[Pg 43]
For what the devil force that smiles
At man's immedicable pain?
I have not lost my faith in God.
Life has grown dark, I only say:
Dear God, my feet have lost the way.
Religion, wisdom do not give
A place to stand, a space to live. ”

“ And with our eager hands draw up the bucketless rope.
*****
This is the tragic, the symbolic face,
Le Rocher or Starved Rock,
Round which the eternal turtles drink and swim
And serpents green and strange,
As race comes after race,
War after war.
This is the sphinx whose Memnon lips breathe dirges
To empire's wayward star,
And over the race's restless urges,
Whose lips unlock
Life's secret which is vanishment and change. ”

“ Ahaz, there in the seat of judgment, hear,
If you have wit to understand my plea.
Swine-devils are too much for swine, that's clear,
Poor man possessed of such is partly free,
Is neither drowned, destroyed at once, his chains ”

“ The marriage vow I honor,
And woman's virtue. Though I stray, I hold
That women should be chaste, though man is not.
That's why I placed Allegra in a convent....
[Pg 23]
Now to the letter, and my story of it.
The mother, Claire, Claire Claremont, as you know—
Pined for Allegra; would possess the child
And take her from the convent—where? No doubt
To Shelley's nest, where William Godwin's daughter
Raised on free love, and Shelley preaching it,
And Claire in whom 'tis bred, hold sway, who read,
Talk, argue, dream of freedom, all the things
Opposed to what is in the present order. ”

“ Farmers, butchers, cobblers, dentists,
Lawyers, doctors, preachers, druggists
Hustled and ran in the afternoon,
Following Alice who led the way
Chanting an ancient roundelay,
A wild and haunting tune.
Her hair streamed over her little shoulders
Back in the wind for all beholders.
And her little feet were as swift and white
As waves that dance in the noonday light.
Youths were panting, middle aged men
Had to rest and resume again.
She ran the posse almost to death,
All were gasping and out of breath. ”

“ For many a rood its boundaries, like the sprawled
And fallen Hephaestos, and has tenanted
Its neighborhoods increasing and unwalled
With peoples from all lands.
From Milwaukee Avenue to the populous mills
Of South Chicago, from the Sheridan Drive
Through forests where the water smiles
To Harlem for miles and miles.
It reaches out its hands,
Powerful and alive
With dreams to touch tomorrow, which it wills
To dawn and which shall dawn.... ”

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

“ Can do what they desire. I am consistent,
For from the first I've preached the people's rule,
Abided by the people's voice and taken
Defeat with grace because the people gave it.
So now I say the people have the right
To pass upon all questions. As I said
When starting as a public man, the people
Could have what Government they desired, in fact
A King, or despotism, if they voted for it.
For all this talk of rights, or realms of right,
Or individual preferences, beliefs
And courses in the world is swallowed up
By right of the majority—the serpent ”

“ At the corner of Ayer and Knox Streets, Methodist.
As I was passing by a vile saloon
Some men were entering the back room, saying
Is he dead or drunk, and such things. I looked in,
Went in at last and saw this fellow there,
Hunched, doubled down into a chair asleep,
Mud on his face as you saw, clothes bespattered,
The smell of drink upon him. Then we took him
And brought him here, I helped, a Christian duty.
But more important, if he wakes I'm here
To bring his soul to Christ before he dies—
And he is dying. Yes, it's plain enough
The snows of death are falling. ”