And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, “Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich—yes, richer than a king, And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head. VAIN GRATUITIES Never was there a man much uglier In the eyes of other women, or more grim: “The Lord has filled her chalice to the brim, So let us pray she’s a philosopher,” They said; and there was more they said of her— Deeming it, after twenty years with him, No wonder that she kept her figure slim And always made you think of lavender. But she, demure as ever, and as fair, Almost, as they remembered her before She found him, would have laughed had she been there; And all they said would have been heard no more Than foam that washes on an island shore Where there are none to listen or to care. THE DARK HILLS Dark hills at evening in the west, Where sunset hovers like a sound Of golden horns that sang to rest Old bones of warriors under ground, Far now from all the bannered ways Where flash the legions of the sun, You fade—as if the last of days Were fading, and all wars were done. _Edgar Lee Masters_ Edgar Lee Masters was born at Garnett, Kansas, August 23, 1869, of old Puritan and pioneering stock. When he was still a boy, the family moved to Illinois, where, after desultory schooling, he studied law in his father’s office at Lewiston. For a year he practised with his father and then went to Chicago, where he became a successful and prominent attorney.