The Open Sea (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By Edgar Lee Masters

The poems in this evocative collection are written in the same vein as Masters’s tour de force, Spoon River Anthology. In free verse, Masters gives voice to a gathering of historical figures and fictitious characters who tell their stories—both the poignant and the sordid—from places as diverse as ancient Rome, Babylon, and the American Midwest. Among the selections are “Adelaide and John Wilkes Booth,” and “Invocation to the Gods.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Jun 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781411450585

Edgar Lee Masters

Edgar LeeMasters (1868–1950) was an American attorney, poet, biographer, and dramatist. Born in Garnett, Kansas to attorney Hardin Wallace Masters and Emma Jerusha Dexter, they later moved to Lewistown, Illinois, where Masters attended high school and had his first publication in the Chicago Daily News. After working in his father’s law office, he was admitted to the Illinois State Bar and moved to Chicago. In 1898 he married Helen M. Jenkins and had three children. Masters died on March 5, 1950, in Melrose Park, Pennsylvania, at the age of eighty-one. He is buried in Oakland Cemetery in Petersburg, Illinois.

Book preview

THE OPEN SEA

EDGAR LEE MASTERS

This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

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ISBN: 978-1-4114-5058-5

CONTENTS

PART I

BRUTUS

Brutus and Antony

At the Mermaid Tavern

Charlotte Corday

A Man Child is Born

Richard Booth to His Son, Junius Booth

A Man Child is Born

Squire Bowling Green

Lincoln Speaking in Congress

John Wilkes Booth at the Farm

Junius Brutus Booth

A Certain Poet on the Debates

PART II

The Decision

PART III

Lincoln Makes a Memorandum

Winter Garden Theatre

The Sparrow Hawk in the Rain

Adelaide and John Wilkes Booth

Brutus Lives Again in Booth

Booth's Philippi

The Burial of Boston Corbett

THE NEW APOCRYPHA

Business Reverses

The Fig Tree

Tribute Money

The Great Merger

At Decapolis

The Single Standard

First Entrants

John in Prison

Ananias and Sapphira

The Two Malefactors

Berenice

NEBUCHADNEZZAR OR EATING GRASS

HIP LUNG ON YUAN CHANG

ULYSSES

THE PARTY

CELSUS AT HADRIAN'S VILLA

INVOCATION TO THE GODS

PENTHEUS IN THESE STATES

COMPARATIVE CRIMINALS

THE GREAT RACE PASSES

DEMOS THE DESPOT

A REPUBLIC

THE INN

MONODY ON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM MARION REEDY

GOD AND MY COUNTRY

THE DUNES OF INDIANA

NATURE

BRUTUS

BRUTUS AND ANTONY

Part I

(Lucilius Talks at a Feast Given to Aristocrates in Rome)

B. C. 20