The Great Valley

by Edgar Lee Masters

In time our hero weds
A woman like himself, and little heads
Soon run about a house or pleasant yard.
He must work now to keep them—have regard
To the community, its thoughts and ways.
What church is here? He finds it best to praise
Its pastor and its flock, his children send
To Sunday school, if never he attend
Its services. What politics obtain?
He must support the tussock leaf campaigns
If he would eat himself. ’Tis best to join
The party which controls the greater coin.
And so what is his party’s interest
In business? There must his soul invest
Its treasure till the two are wholly one.
Like the poor prostitute he is undone
In virtue not alone, but he has made
Himself a cog-wheel in the filthy trade
Of justice courts, police and graft in wine
Bondsmen and lawyers with a strength malign
Moving the silken vestured marionette
To laugh, entice and play the sad coquette.
Yet if for bread you are compelled to ask
The giver may impose an evil task,
Or terms of life. Would you retain a roof,
Mix with the crowd, nor dare to stand aloof.
Our hero sees this, wears a hopeful smile
To cover up his spattered soul, and while
Digesting wounded truth, hiding his thought,
His own opinions, for his soul is caught
Amid the idiot hands that strike and press—
One may glide through who learns to say yes, yes,
While in heart-sickness whispering to himself:
I do this for the children, and for pelf
To keep the house and yard, the cupboard full.
Some time I hope to free myself and pull
My legs out of this social muck and mire.
First money is, then freedom his desire,
But often neither comes. If he win wealth
He has become lead-poisoned, for by stealth
The virus of the colors which he used
To paint his life is spread and interfused
In every vein. By ways complaisant
Our hero has got gold from ignorant
Vulgarian nondescripts, has entertained
The odorous cormorants, and has profaned
His household gods to keep them safe and whole
Upon the altar—winning what a goal!
For meantime in this living he has schooled
His children in the precepts which have ruled
His days from the beginning. They are bred
His out-look to repeat, and even to tread
The way he went amid the tangled wood
In their own time and chosen neighborhood.
What has our hero done? Why nothing more
Than feed upon the beech leaves, gather store
For children moths to feed on, and get strength
To climb the branches and on leaves at length
To feed of their own will.

Is this a man?
Is this your typical American?

COME, REPUBLIC

Come! United States of America,
And you one hundred million souls, O Republic,
Throw out your chests, lift up your heads,
And walk with a soldier’s stride.
Quit burning up for money alone.
Quit slouching and dawdling,
And dreaming and moralising.
Quit idling about the streets, like the boy
In the village, who pines for the city.
Root out the sinister secret societies,
And the clans that stick together for office,
And the good men who care nothing for liberty,
But would run you, O Republic, as a household is run.
It is time, Republic, to get some class,
It is time to harden your muscles,
And to clear your eyes in the cold water of Reality,
And to tighten your nerves.
It is time to think what Nature means,
And to consult Nature,
When your soul, as you call it, calls to you
To follow principle!
It is time to snuff out the A. D. Bloods.
It is time to lift yourself, O Republic,
From the street corners of Spoon River.

Do you wish to survive,
And to count in the years to come?
Then do what the plow-boys did in sixty-one,
Who left the fields for the camp,
And tightened their nerves and hardened their arms
Till the day they left the camp for the fields
The bravest, readiest, clearest-eyed
Straight-walking men in the world,
And symbolical of a Republic
That is worthy the name!

If you, Republic, had kept the faith
Of a culture all your own,
And a spiritual independence,
And a freedom large and new.
If you had not set up a Federal judge in China,
And scrambled for place in the Orient,
And stolen the Philippine Islands,
And mixed in the business of Europe,
Three thousand miles of water east,
And seven thousand west
Had kept your hands untainted, free
For a culture all your own!
But while you were fumbling, and while you were dreaming
As the boy in the village dreams of the city
You were doing something worse:
You were imitating!
You came to the city and aped the swells,
And tried to enter their set!
You strained your Fate to their fate,
And borrowed the mood to live their life!
And here you are in the game, Republic,
But not prepared to play!

But you did it.
And the water east and water west
Are no longer your safeguard:
They are now your danger and difficulty!
And you must live the life you started to imitate
In spite of these perilous waters.
For they keep you now from being neutral—
For you are not neutral, Republic,
You only pretend to be.
You are not free, independent, brave,
You are shackled, cowardly
For what could happen to you overnight
In the Orient,
If you stood with your shoulders up,
And were Neutral!

Suppose you do it, Republic.
Get some class,
Throw out your chest, lift up your head,
Be a ruler in the world,
And not a hermit in regimentals with a flint-lock.
Colossus with one foot in Europe,
And one in China,
Quit looking between your legs for the re-appearance
Of the star of Bethlehem—
Stand up and be a man!

PAST AND PRESENT

Past midnight! Vastly overhead
A wash of stars—the town’s asleep!
And through the pine trees of the dead
The rising winds of morning creep.