Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

All Life in a Life

Edgar Lee Masters

HIS father had a large family

Of girls and boys, and he was born and bred

In a barn or kind of cattle shed.

But he was a hardy youngster, and grew to be

A boy with eyes that sparkled like a rod

Of white-hot iron in the blacksmith shop.

His face was ruddy like a rising moon,

And his hair was black as sheep’s wool that is black,

And he had rugged arms and legs and a strong back,

And he had a voice half flute and half bassoon,

And from his toes up to his head’s top

He was a man, simple but intricate;

And most men differ who try to delineate

His life and fate.

He never seemed ashamed

Of poverty or of his origin. He was a wayward child

Nevertheless, though wise and mild

And thoughtful; but when angered then he flamed

As fire does in a forge.

When he was ten years old he ran away

To be alone and watch the sea and the stars

At midnight from a mountain gorge.

When he returned his parents scolded him

And threatened him with bolts and bars.

Then they grew soft for his return, and gay,

And with their love would have enfolded him;

But even at ten years old he had a way

Of gazing at you with a look austere

Which gave his kin-folk fear.

He had no child-like love for father or mother,

Sister or brother;

They were the same to him as any other.

He was a little cold, a little queer.

His father was a laborer and now

They made the boy work for his daily bread.

They say he read

A book or two during these years of work.

But if there was a secret

Between the pages under the light of his brow

It came forth. And if he had a woman

In love or out of love, or a companion or a chum,

History is dumb.

So far as we know he dreamed and worked with hands,

And learned to know his genius’s commands—

Or what is called one’s daemon.

And this became at last the city’s call.

He had now reached the age of thirty years,

And found a Dream of Life and a solution

For slavery of soul and even all

Miseries that flow from things material.

To free the world was his soul’s resolution.

But his family had great fears

For him, knowing the evil

Which might befall him, seeing that the light

Of his own dream had blinded his mind’s eyes.

They could not tell but what he had a devil.

But still, in their tears’ despite

And warnings’, he departed with replies

That when a man’s genius calls him

He must obey no matter what befalls him.

What he had in his mind was growth

Of soul by watching,

And the creation of eyes

Over your mind’s eyes to supervise

A clear activity and to ward off sloth.

What he had in his mind was scotching

And killing the snake of Hatred, and stripping the glove

From the hand of Hypocrisy, and quenching the fire

Of Falsehood and Unbrotherly Desire.

What he had in his mind was simply Love—

And it was strange he preached the sword and force

To establish Love, but it was not strange,

Since he did this, his life took on a change.

And what he taught seems muddled at its source

With moralizing and with moral strife;

For morals are merely the Truth diluted,

And sweetened up and suited

To the business and bread of Life.

And now this City was just what you’d find

A city anywhere—

A turmoil and a Vanity Fair,

A sort of heaven and a sort of Tophet.

There were so many leaders of his kind

The city didn’t care

For one additional prophet.

He said some extravagant things

And planted a few stings

Under the rich man’s hide.

And one of the sensational newspapers

Gave him a line or two for cutting capers

In front of the Palace of Justice and the Church.

But all the first-grade people took the other side

Of the street when they saw him coming,

With a rag-tag crowd singing and humming,

And curious boys and men up in a perch

Of a tree or window taking the spectacle in,

And the Corybantic din

Of a Salvation Army, as it were.

And whatever he dreamed when he lived in a little town

The intelligent people ignored him, and this is the stir,

And the only stir, he made in the city.

But there was a certain sinister

Fellow who came to him hearing of his renown

And said, “You can be mayor of this city—

We need a man like you for mayor.”

And others said, “You’d make a lawyer or a politician—

Look how the people follow you!

Why don’t you hire out as a special writer?

You could become a business man, a rhetorician—

You could become a player—

You can grow rich. There’s nothing for a fighter

Fighting as you are but to end in ruin.”

But he turned from them on his way, pursuing

The dream he had in view.

He had a rich man or two

Who took up with him against the powerful frown

That looked him down.

For you’ll always find a rich man or two

To take up with anything—

There are those who want to get into society, or bring

Their riches to a social recognition;

Or ill-formed souls who lack the real patrician

Spirit for life.

But as for him he didn’t care, he passed

Where the richness of living was rife;

And like wise Goethe talking to the last

With cab-men rather than with lords,

He sat about the markets and the fountains,

He walked about the country and the mountains,

Took trips upon the lakes and waded fords,

Barefooted; laughing as a young animal

Disports itself amid the festival

Of warm winds, sunshine, summer’s carnival—

With laborers, carpenters, seamen

And some loose women.

And certain notable sinners

Gave him dinners.

And he went to weddings, and to places where youth slakes

Its thirst for happiness, and they served him cakes

And wine wherever he went.

And he ate and drank, and spent

His time in feasting and in telling stories,

And singing poems of lilies and of trees—

With crowds of people crowded around his knees—

That searched with lightning secrets hidden

Of life and of life’s glories,

Of death and of the soul’s way after death.

Time makes amends usually for scandal’s breath,

Which touched him to his earthly ruination.

But this city had a Civic Federation,

And a certain social order which intrigues

Through churches, courts, with an endless ramification

Of money and morals to save itself.

And this city had a Bar Association,

Also its Public Efficiency Leagues

For laying honest men upon the shelf

While making private pelf

Secure and free to increase.

And this city had illustrious Pharisees,

And this city had a legion

Of men who make a business of religion—

With eyes one inch apart,

Dark and narrow of heart—

Who give themselves and give the city no peace,

And who are everywhere the best police

For Life as business.

And when they saw this youth

Was telling the truth,

And that his followers were multiplying,

And were going about rejoicing and defying

The social order, and were stirring up

The dregs of discontent in the cup

With the hand of their own happiness,

They saw dynamic mysteries

In the poems of lilies and trees:

Therefore they held him for a felony.

If you will take a kernel of wheat

And first make free

The outer flake, and then pare off the meat

Of edible starch, you’ll find at the kernel’s core

The life germ. And this young man’s words were dim

With blasphemy, sedition at the rim,

Which fired the heads of dreamers like new wine.

But this was just the outward force of him;

For this young man’s philosophy was more

Than such external ferment, being divine

With secrets so profound no plummet line

Can altogether sound it. It means growth

Of soul by watching,

And the creation of eyes

Over your mind’s eyes to supervise

A clear activity and to ward off sloth.

What he had in mind was scotching

And killing the snake of Hatred, and stripping the glove

From the hand of Hypocrisy, and quenching the fire

Of falsehood and unbrotherly Desire.

What he had in mind was simply Love.

But he was prosecuted

As a rebel, and as a rebel executed—

Right in a public place where all could see.

And his mother watched him hang for the felony.

He hated to die, being but thirty-three,

And fearing that his poems might be lost.

And certain members of the Bar Association,

And of the Civic Federation,

And of the League of Public Efficiency,

And a legion

Of men devoted to religion,

With policemen, soldiers, roughs,

Loose women, thieves and toughs,

Came out to see him die;

And hooted at him, giving up the ghost

In great despair and with a fearful cry!

And after him there was a man named Paul

Who almost spoiled it all.

And protozoan things like hypocrites,

And parasitic things who make a food

Of the mysteries of God for earthly power,

Must wonder how before this young man’s hour

They lived without his blood

Shed on that day, and which

In red cells is so rich.