Spoon River Anthology

Contents:
Author: Edgar Lee Masters

Mrs. Merritt

SILENT before the jury
Returning no word to the judge when he asked me
If I had aught to say against the sentence,
Only shaking my head.
What could I say to people who thought
That a woman of thirty-five was at fault
When her lover of nineteen killed her husband?
Even though she had said to him over and over,
"Go away, Elmer, go far away,
I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body:
You will do some terrible thing."
And just as I feared, he killed my husband;
With which I had nothing to do, before
God Silent for thirty years in prison
And the iron gates of Joliet
Swung as the gray and silent trusties
Carried me out in a coffin.

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American Modernism

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Chicago: Edgar Lee Masters, "Mrs. Merritt," Spoon River Anthology in Spoon River Anthology Original Sources, accessed April 25, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=D9CMX5GCGUUTV45.

MLA: Masters, Edgar Lee. "Mrs. Merritt." Spoon River Anthology, in Spoon River Anthology, Original Sources. 25 Apr. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=D9CMX5GCGUUTV45.

Harvard: Masters, EL, 'Mrs. Merritt' in Spoon River Anthology. cited in , Spoon River Anthology. Original Sources, retrieved 25 April 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=D9CMX5GCGUUTV45.