Explore "Zilpha Marsh" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
At four o'clock in late October / I sat alone in the country school-house / Back from the road 'mid stricken fields, / And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane, / And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove, / With its open door blurring the shadows / With the spectral glow of a dying fire.
In an idle mood I was running the planchette --
All at once my wrist grew limp, / And my hand moved rapidly over the board, / Till the name of "Charles Guiteau" was spelled, / Who threatened to materialize before me.
I rose and fled from the room bare-headed / Into the dusk, afraid of my gift.
And after that the spirits swarmed --
Chaucer, Caesar, Poe and Marlowe, / Cleopatra and Mrs. Surratt --
Wherever I went, with messages --
Mere trifling twaddle, Spoon River agreed.
You talk nonsense to children, don't you?
And suppose I see what you never saw / And never heard of and have no word for, / I must talk nonsense when you ask me / What it is I see!