Explore "Robert Davidson" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I grew spiritually fat living off the souls of men.
If I saw a soul that was strong / I wounded its pride and devoured its strength.
The shelters of friendship knew my cunning, / For where I could steal a friend I did so.
And wherever I could enlarge my power / By undermining ambition, I did so, / Thus to make smooth my own.
And to triumph over other souls, / Just to assert and prove my superior strength, / Was with me a delight, / The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics.
Devouring souls, I should have lived forever.
But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis, / With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits, / Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed.
I collapsed at last with a shriek.
Remember the acorn;
It does not devour other acorns.