Explore "Jefferson Howard" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
My valiant fight! For I call it valiant, / With my father's beliefs from old Virginia:
Hating slavery, but no less war.
I, full of spirit, audacity, courage / Thrown into life here in Spoon River, / With its dominant forces drawn from New England, / Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers, / Hating me, yet fearing my arm.
With wife and children heavy to carry --
Yet fruits of my very zest of life.
Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige, / And reaping evils I had not sown;
Foe of the church with its charnel dankness, / Friend of the human touch of the tavern;
Tangled with fates all alien to me, / Deserted by hands I called my own.
Then just as I felt my giant strength / Short of breath, behold my children / Had wound their lives in stranger gardens --
And I stood alone, as I started alone / My valiant life! I died on my feet, / Facing the silence -- facing the prospect / That no one would know of the fight I made.