Explore "Robert Fulton Tanner" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
If a man could bite the giant hand / That catches and destroys him, / As I was bitten by a rat / While demonstrating my patent trap, / In my hardware store that day.
But a man can never avenge himself / On the monstrous ogre Life.
You enter the room -- that's being born;
And then you must live -- work out your soul, / Aha! the bait that you crave is in view:
A woman with money you want to marry, / Prestige, place, or power in the world.
But there's work to do and things to conquer --
Oh, yes! the wires that screen the bait.
At last you get in -- but you hear a step:
The ogre, Life, comes into the room, / (He was waiting and heard the clang of the spring)
To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese, / And stare with his burning eyes at you, / And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you, / Running up and down in the trap, / Until your misery bores him.