The secret of the stars—gravitation. The secret of the earth—layers of rock. The secret of the soil—to receive seed. The secret of the seed—the germ. The secret of man—the sower. The secret of woman—the soil. My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find.
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–#L7.
Cite this poem
Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950).
“Mrs. Sibley.” First published in Spoon River Anthology (1916).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/edgar-lee-masters/mrs-sibley/.
Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.
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