Explore "Cassius Hueffer" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
They have chiseled on my stone the words:
"His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him / That nature might stand up and say to all the world, / This was a man."
Those who knew me smile / As they read this empty rhetoric.
My epitaph should have been:
"Life was not gentle to him, / And the elements so mixed in him / That he made warfare on life / In the which he was slain."
While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues, / Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph / Graven by a fool!