Robert Southey Burke

I spent my money trying to elect you Mayor
A. D. Blood.
I lavished my admiration upon you,
You were to my mind the almost perfect man.
You devoured my personality,
And the idealism of my youth,
And the strength of a high-souled fealty.
And all my hopes for the world,
And all my beliefs in Truth,
Were smelted up in the blinding heat
Of my devotion to you,
And molded into your image.
And then when I found what you were:
That your soul was small
And your words were false
As your blue-white porcelain teeth,
And your cuffs of celluloid,
I hated the love I had for you,
I hated myself, I hated you
For my wasted soul, and wasted youth.
And I say to all, beware of ideals,
Beware of giving your love away
To any man alive.

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–#L23.

Cite this poem

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

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