Explore "Reuben Pantier" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Well, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted, / Your love was not all in vain.
I owe whatever I was in life / To your hope that would not give me up, / To your love that saw me still as good.
Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell you the story.
I pass the effect of my father and mother;
The milliner's daughter made me trouble / And out I went in the world, / Where I passed through every peril known / Of wine and women and joy of life.
One night, in a room in the Rue de Rivoli, / I was drinking wine with a black-eyed cocotte, / And the tears swam into my eyes.
She though they were amorous tears and smiled / For thought of her conquest over me.
But my soul was three thousand miles away, / In the days when you taught me in Spoon River.
And just because you no more could love me, / Nor pray for me, nor write me letters, / The eternal silence of you spoke instead.
And the Black-eyed cocotte took the tears for hers, / As well as the deceiving kisses I gave her.
Somehow, from that hour, I had a new vision --
Dear Emily Sparks!