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Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950)

The Circuit Judge


              1Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions
              2Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain --
              3Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred
              4Were marking scores against me,
              5But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory.
              6I in life was the Circuit Judge, a maker of notches,
              7Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored,
              8Not on the right of the matter.
              9O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone!
            10For worse than the anger of the wronged,
            11The curses of the poor,
            12Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear,
            13Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer,
            14Hanged by my sentence,
            15Was innocent in soul compared with me.

Notes

1] John E. Hallwas, in Spoon River Anthology: An Annotated Edition (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992): 386, identifies the circuit judge as Simeon P. Shope, later justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.

3] Nemesis: Greek goddess of fate and scourge of the proud.

6] notches: cuts, records.

13] Another of Masters' Spoon River characters.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology, illustrated by Oliver Herford (London: T. Werner Laurie, [1916]): 75. 8-NBI Masters New York Public Library
First publication date: 1915
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2003
Recent editing: 1:2003/6/2

Rhyme: unrhyming

Other poems by Edgar Lee Masters

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