Judson Stoddard

On a mountain top above the clouds
That streamed like a sea below me
I said that peak is the thought of Buddha,
And that one is the prayer of Jesus,
And this one is the dream of Plato,
And that one there the song of Dante,
And this is Kant and this is Newton,
And this is Milton and this is Shakespeare,
And this the hope of the Mother Church,
And this⁠—why all these peaks are poems,
Poems and prayers that pierce the clouds.
And I said “What does God do with mountains
That rise almost to heaven?”

Where this text comes from

First published in Spoon River Anthology (1916). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/edgar-lee-masters_spoon-river-anthology, spoon-river-anthology.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L13.

Cite this poem

Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950). “Judson Stoddard.” First published in Spoon River Anthology (1916). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/edgar-lee-masters/judson-stoddard/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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