Edgar Lee Masters

Edgar Lee Masters (23 August 1868 – 5 March 1950) was an American poet, biographer and dramatist. He is most famous for the Spoon River Anthology.

In time you shall see Fate approach you
In 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.

Quotes

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.

• In my Spanish cloak,
  And old slouch hat,
  And overshoes of felt,
  And Tyke, my faithful dog,
  And my knotted hickory cane,
  I slipped about with a bull's-eye lantern
  From door to door on the square
  • "Andy the Night-Watch"

• Blind as I was, I tried to get out
  As the carriage fell in the ditch,
  And was caught in the wheels and killed.
  • "Blind Jack"

• Go by reverently, and read with sober care
  How a great people, riding with defiant shouts
  The centaur of Revolution,
  Spurred and whipped to frenzy,
  Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea
  Over the precipice they were nearing,
  And fell from his back in precipitate awe
  To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being.
  • "Captain Orlando Killion'

• And when you are poor and have to carry
  The Christian creed and wife and children
  All on your back, it is too much!
  That's why I made the Elixir of Youth,
  Which landed me in the jail at Peoria
  Branded a swindler and a crook
  By the upright Federal Judge!
  • "Dr. Siegfried Iseman"

• You may think, passer-by, that Fate
  Is a pit-fall outside of yourself,
  Around which you may walk by the use of foresight
  And wisdom.
  • "Lyman King"

• In time you shall see Fate approach you
  In 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.
  • Lyman King

• 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.
  • "Fiddler Jones"

• 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.
  • Fiddler Jones

Quotes about

• When Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology came out in Italian, suddenly there was widespread interest in North American writing.
  • Natalia Ginzburg Interview (1992)