The Circuit Judge

By Edgar Lee Masters 1868–1950

Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions

Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain i

Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred

Were marking scores against me,

But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory.

I in life was the Circuit Judge, a maker of notches,

Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored,

Not on the right of the matter.

O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone!

For worse than the anger of the wronged,

The curses of the poor,

Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear,

Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer,

Hanged by my sentence,

Was innocent in soul compared with me.

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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