Explore "Dora Williams" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me / I went to Springfield. There I met a lush, / Whose father just deceased left him a fortune.
He married me when drunk. My life was wretched.
A year passed and one day they found him dead.
That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago.
After a time met Tyler Rountree, villain.
I moved on to New York. A gray-haired magnate / Went mad about me -- so another fortune.
He died one night right in my arms, you know.
(I saw his purple face for years thereafter.)
There was almost a scandal. I moved on, / This time to Paris. I was now a woman, / Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich.
My sweet apartment near the Champs Élysées / Became a center for all sorts of people, / Musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles, / Where we spoke French and German, Italian, English.
I wed Count Navigato, native of Genoa.
We went to Rome. He poisoned me, I think.
Now in the Campo Santo overlooking / The sea where young Columbus dreamed new worlds, / See what they chiseled: "Contessa Navigato / Implora eterna quiete. "