Conrad Siever

By Edgar Lee Masters 1868–1950

Not in that wasted garden

Where bodies are drawn into grass

That feeds no flocks, and into evergreens

That bear no fruit —

There where along the shaded walks

Vain sighs are heard,

And vainer dreams are dreamed

Of close communion with departed souls —

But here under the apple tree

I loved and watched and pruned

With gnarled hands

In the long, long years;

Here under the roots of this northern-spy

To move in the chemic change and circle of life,

Into the soil and into the flesh of the tree,

And into the living epitaphs

Of redder apples!

Biography

Edgar Lee Masters is best remembered for his great collection Spoon River Anthology, a sequence of over two hundred free-verse epitaphs spoken from the cemetery of the town of Spoon River. When the collection first saw publication in 1915, it caused a great sensation because of its forthrightness about sex, moral decay, and hypocrisy; but its cynical view of Midwestern small town values influenced a whole generation of writers . . .

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