Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950)
State's Attorney Fallas
1I, the scourge-wielder, balance-wrecker,
2Smiter with whips and swords;
3I, hater of the breakers of the law;
4I, legalist, inexorable and bitter,
5Driving the jury to hang the madman, Barry Holden,
6Was made as one dead by light too bright for eyes,
7And woke to face a Truth with bloody brow:
8Steel forceps fumbled by a doctor's hand
9Against my boy's head as he entered life
10Made him an idiot.
11I turned to books of science
12To care for him.
13That's how the world of those whose minds are sick
14Became my work in life, and all my world.
15Poor ruined boy! You were, at last, the potter
16And I and all my deeds of charity
17The vessels of your hand.
Notes
5] Barry Holden: a wife-killer, and another of Masters' 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]): 80. 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
