Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950). Spoon River Anthology. 1916.

6. Cassius Hueffer

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!