Edgar Lee Masters

I was crushed between Altgeld and Armour
I lost many friends, much time and
Fighting for Altgeld whom Editor
Denounced as the candidate of gamblers and anarchists

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
What do you see, a harvest of clover

I winged my bird,
Though he flew toward the setting sun;
But just as the shot rang out, he soared Up and up through the splinters of golden light,
Till he turned right over, feathers ruffled,

She took my strength by minutes,
She took my life by hours,
She drained me like a fevered moon That saps the spinning world
The days went by like shadows,

Not, where the stairway turns in the dark,
A hooded figure, shriveled under a flowing cloak
Not yellow eyes in the room at night,
Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray

You praise my self-sacrifice,
Spoon River,
In rearing Irene and Mary,
Orphans of my older sister

Oh, you young radicals and dreamers,
You dauntless
Who pass by my headstone,
Mock not its record of my captaincy in the