English Poetry. Edgar Lee Masters. Margaret Fuller Slack. Эдгар Ли Мастерс.

Edgar Lee Masters (Эдгар Ли Мастерс)

Margaret Fuller Slack

I would have been as great as George Eliot
But for an untoward fate.
For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit,
Chin resting on hand, and deep-set eyes --
Gray, too, and far-searching.
But there was the old, old problem:
Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity?
Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me,
Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel,
And I married him, giving birth to eight children,
And had no time to write.
It was all over with me, anyway,
When I ran the needle in my hand
While washing the baby’s things,
And died from lock-jaw, an ironical death.
Hear me, ambitious souls,
Sex is the curse of life.

Edgar Lee Masters’s other poems:

1. Mrs. Kessler
2. Schroeder the Fisherman
3. On a Bust
4. Theodore the Poet
5. Roger Heston

882

To the dedicated English version of this website

---