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Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Franklin Jones

Edgar Lee Masters

If I could have lived another year
I could have finished my flying machine,
And become rich and famous.
Hence it is fitting the workman
Who tried to chisel a dove for me
Made it look more like a chicken.
For what is it all but being hatched,
And running about the yard,
To the day of the block?
Save that a man has an angel’s brain,
And sees the ax from the first!
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From Spoon River Anthology | 1915
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