Explore "Henry Layton" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Whoever thou art who passest by / Know that my father was gentle, / And my mother was violent, / While I was born the whole of such hostile halves, / Not intermixed and fused, / But each distinct, feebly soldered together.
Some of you saw me as gentle, / Some as violent, / Some as both.
But neither half of me wrought my ruin.
It was the falling asunder of halves, / Never a part of each other, / That left me a lifeless soul.