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Theodore the Poet

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As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours         On the shore of the turbid Spoon         With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish's burrow,         Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead,         First his waving antennae, like straws of hay,         And soon his body, colored like soap-stone,         Gemmed with eyes of jet.         And you wondered in a trance of thought         What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all.         But later your vision watched for men and women         Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities,         Looking for the souls of them to come out,         So that you could see         How they lived, and for what,         And why they kept crawling so busily         Along the sandy way where water fails         As the summer wanes.

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"As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours..."

"Theodore the Poet" is a quintessential example of Edgar Lee Masters's signature style... ### Why We Love This Line At Linespedia, we believe that poetry is the ultimate sanctuary for the soul...

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