Explore "W. Lloyd Garrison Standard" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Vegetarian, non-resistant, free-thinker, in ethics a Christian;
Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhythm of Ingersoll;
Carnivorous, avenger, believer and pagan;
Continent, promiscuous, changeable, treacherous, vain, / Proud, with the pride that makes struggle a thing for laughter;
With heart cored out by the worm of theatric despair;
Wearing the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat;
I, child of the abolitionist idealism --
A sort of Brand in a birth of half-and-half.
What other thing could happen when I defended / The patriot scamps who burned the court house, / That Spoon River might have a new one, / Than plead them guilty? When Kinsey Keene drove through / The card-board mask of my life with a spear of light, / What could I do but slink away, like the beast of myself / Which I raised from a whelp, to a corner and growl.
The pyramid of my life was nought but a dune, / Barren and formless, spoiled at last by the storm.