My FavoritE PoemS!

Here are some poems, which impacted my life and continue to do so anytime I read them. I first read them during my junior year of high school and it truly is hard to believe that almost six years have passed since I last read them. These poems were written by Edgar Lee Masters and were compiled into a work called, The Spoon River Anthology. In it, he discusses the need to live life to the fullest and to "seize the day" (carpe diem) by including the epitaphs of ordinary, small town people in the work. Some of the epitaphs in the work share a message of making one's life count, while others illustrate a life full of sadness and regrets. No matter what scenario is presented in these poems (i.e. living life to the fullest or living a life full of remorse and regrets), they impact the reader in the same way- they cause the reader to evaluate his own life and to desire to make his life mean something. The words, "I should have..." or "Why didn't I...?" are words which cannot change our pasts and relate to the poems in The Spoon River Anthology. The time is now to seize every opportunity that comes our way. Never live your life in a way that causes you to relate to the words of Harriet Beecher Stowe: "The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone." Rather, say what you need to say NOW and do what you need to do NOW. Put your pride aside and ACT- never save for tomorrow what you could do today, for if "you pile up enough tomorrows, you'll find you've collected a lot of empty yesterdays (The Music Man)." Lastly, "don't save something for a special occasion. EVERYDAY in your life is a special occasion." (Can you tell I'm a quote person)??? ;-)

Sorry if this appears to be a rant, but I have really felt a connection to these poems and in a way, they have guided my life and helped me to remember that I should not fear death, but rather should fear an unlived life (this quote comes from Tuck Everlasting).

Lucinda Matlock

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,

And played snap-out at Winchester.

One time we changed partners,

Driving home in the midnight of middle June,

And then I found Davis

We were married and lived together for seventy years,

Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,

Eight of whom we lost

Ere I had reached the age of sixty.

I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,

I made the garden, and for the holiday

Rambled over fields where sang the larks,

And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,

And many a flower and medicinal weed--

Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.

At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,

And passed to a sweet repose.

What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,

Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?

Degenerate sons and daughters,

Life is too strong for you--

It takes life to love Life.

George Gray

I have studied many times

The marble which was chiseled for me--

A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.

In truth it pictures not my destination

But my life.

For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;

Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;

Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.

Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.

And now I know that we must lift the sail

And catch the winds of destiny

Wherever they drive the boat.

To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,

But life without meaning is the torture

Of restlessness and vague desire--

It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

Fiddler Jones

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?

Or a meadow to walk through to the river?

The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands

For beeves hereafter ready for market;

Or else you can hear the rustle of skirts

Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.

To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust

Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;

They looked to me like Read-Head Sammy

Stepping it off, to "Toor-a-loor."

How could I till my forty acres

Not to speak of getting more,

With a medley of horns, bassoons, and piccolos

Stirred in my brain by crows and robins

And the creak of a a wind-mill-- only these?

And I never started to plow in my life

That someone 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.