Eugenia Todd

By Edgar Lee Masters 1868–1950

Have any of you, passers-by,

Had an old tooth that was an unceasing discomfort?

Or a pain in the side that never quite left you?

Or a malignant growth that grew with time?

So that even in profoundest slumber

There was shadowy consciousness or the phantom of thought

Of the tooth, the side, the growth?

Even so thwarted love, or defeated ambition,

Or a blunder in life which mixed your life

Hopelessly to the end,

Will like a tooth, or a pain in the side,

Float through your dreams in the final sleep

Till perfect freedom from the earth-sphere

Comes to you as one who wakes

Healed and glad in the morning!

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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