Explore "Carl Hamblin" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked, / And I was tarred and feathered, / For publishing this on the day the Anarchists were hanged in Chicago:
"I saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes / Standing on the steps of a marble temple.
Great multitudes passed in front of her, / Lifting their faces to her imploringly.
In her left hand she held a sword.
She was brandishing the sword, / Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer, / Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic.
In her right hand she held a scale;
Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed / By those who dodged the strokes of the sword.
A man in a black gown read from a manuscript:
'She is no respecter of persons.'
Then a youth wearing a red cap / Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage.
And lo, the lashes had been eaten away / From the oozy eyelids;
The eye-balls were seared with a milky mucus;
The madness of a dying soul / Was written on her face --
But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage. "