FROM SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY, Edgar Lee Masters, 1916

CASSIUS HEUFFER

THEY have chiseled on my stone the words:
"His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him
That nature might stand up and say to all the world,
This was a man."

Those who knew me smile
As they read this empty rhetoric.
My epitaph should have been:
"Life was not gentle to him,
And the elements so mixed in him
That he made warfare on life,
In the which he was slain."

While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,
Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph
Graven by a fool!
_________________________________

I aspire not to be a fool and to honor in these memorials those whom I loved and admired as well as those I never got the chance to know.

FROM SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY, Edgar Lee Masters, 1916

CASSIUS HEUFFER

THEY have chiseled on my stone the words:
"His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him
That nature might stand up and say to all the world,
This was a man."

Those who knew me smile
As they read this empty rhetoric.
My epitaph should have been:
"Life was not gentle to him,
And the elements so mixed in him
That he made warfare on life,
In the which he was slain."

While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,
Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph
Graven by a fool!
_________________________________

I aspire not to be a fool and to honor in these memorials those whom I loved and admired as well as those I never got the chance to know.