Explore "Ezra Bartlett" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A chaplain in the army, / A chaplain in the prisons, / An exhorter in Spoon River, / Drunk with divinity, Spoon River --
Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame, / And myself to scorn and wretchedness.
But why will you never see that love of women, / And even love of wine, / Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity, / Reaches the ecstatic vision / And sees the celestial outposts?
Only after many trials for strength, / Only when all stimulants fail, / Does the aspiring soul / By its own sheer power / Find the divine / By resting upon itself.