Explore "The Circuit Judge" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions / Eaten in my headstone by the wind and rain --
Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred / Were marking scores against me, / But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory.
I in life was the Circuit Judge, a maker of notches, / Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored, / Not on the right of the matter.
O wind and rain, leave my headstone alone!
For worse than the anger of the wronged, / The curses of the poor, / Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear, / Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer, / Hanged by my sentence, / Was innocent in soul compared with me.