Nicholas Bindle by Edgar Lee Masters • Simple Poetry

Rev. Abner Peet

    I had no objection at all
    To selling my household effects at auction
    On the village square.
    It gave my beloved flock the chance
    To get something which had belonged to me
    For a memorial.
    But that trunk which was struck off
    To Burchard, the grog-keeper!
    Did you know it contained the manuscripts
    Of a lifetime of sermons?
    And he burned them as waste paper.

Edgar Lee Masters

Henry Phipps

    I was the Sunday-school superintendent,
    The dummy president of the wagon works
    And the canning factory,
    Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique;
    My son the cashier of the bank,
    Wedded to Rhodes, daughter,
    My week days spent in making money,
    My Sundays at church and in prayer.
    In everything a cog in the wheel of things - as - they-are:
    Of money, master and man, made white
    With the paint of the Christian creed.
    And then:
    The bank collapsed.
    I stood and hooked at the wrecked machine -
    The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted;
    The rotten bolts, the broken rods;
    And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again
    In a new devourer of life,
    When newspapers, ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Rev. Percy Ferguson

    The Rev. Percy Ferguson, patrician
    Vicar of Christ, companion of the strong,
    And member of the inner shrine, where men
    Observe the rituals of the golden calf;
    A dilettante, and writer for the press
    Upon such themes as optimism, order,
    Obedience, beauty, law, while Elenor Murray's
    Life was being weighed by Merival
    Preached in disparagement of Merival
    Upon a fatal Sunday, as it chanced,
    Too near to doom's day for the clergyman.
    For, as the word had gone about that waste
    In lives preoccupied this Merival,
    And many talked of waste, and spoke a life
    Where waste had been in whole or part - the pulpit
    Should take a hand, thought Ferguson. And so
    The Reverend Percy Ferguson preached thus
    To a...

Edgar Lee Masters

Chase Henry

    In life I was the town drunkard;
    When I died the priest denied me burial
    In holy ground.
    The which redounded to my good fortune.
    For the Protestants bought this lot,
    And buried my body here,
    Close to the grave of the banker Nicholas,
    And of his wife Priscilla.
    Take note, ye prudent and pious souls,
    Of the cross - currents in life
    Which bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame

Edgar Lee Masters

Lambert Hutchins

    I have two monuments besides this granite obelisk:
    One, the house I built on the hill,
    With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate.
    The other, the lake-front in Chicago,
    Where the railroad keeps a switching yard,
    With whistling engines and crunching wheels
    And smoke and soot thrown over the city,
    And the crash of cars along the boulevard, -
    A blot like a hog-pen on the harbor
    Of a great metropolis, foul as a sty.
    I helped to give this heritage
    To generations yet unborn, with my vote
    In the House of Representatives,
    And the lure of the thing was to be at rest
    From the never - ending fright of need,
    And to give my daughters gentle breeding,
    And a sense of security in life.
    But, you ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Elliott Hawkins

    I looked like Abraham Lincoln.
    I was one of you, Spoon River, in all fellowship,
    But standing for the rights of property and for order.
    A regular church attendant,
    Sometimes appearing in your town meetings to warn you
    Against the evils of discontent and envy
    And to denounce those who tried to destroy the Union,
    And to point to the peril of the Knights of Labor.
    My success and my example are inevitable influences
    In your young men and in generations to come,
    In spite of attacks of newspapers like the Clarion;
    A regular visitor at Springfield
    When the Legislature was in session
    To prevent raids upon the railroads
    And the men building up the state.
    Trusted by them and by you, Spoon River, equally
   ...

Edgar Lee Masters

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