Harlan Sewall

Edgar Lee Masters 1868 (Garnett) – 1950 (Elkins Park)



You never understood, O unknown one,
Why it was I repaid
Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations
First with diminished thanks,
Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you,
So that I might not be compelled to thank you,
And then with silence which followed upon
Our final Separation.
You had cured my diseased soul. But to cure it
You saw my disease, you knew my secret,
And that is why I fled from you.
For though when our bodies rise from pain
We kiss forever the watchful hands
That gave us wormwood, while we shudder
For thinking of the wormwood,
A soul that's cured is a different matter,
For there we'd blot from memory
The soft-toned words, the searching eyes,
And stand forever oblivious,
Not so much of the sorrow itself
As of the hand that healed it.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

42 sec read
82

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEEFAGHEIJKLKMNOPG
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 770
Words 141
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 21

Edgar Lee Masters

Edgar Lee Masters was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist. more…

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