Zenas Witt

I was sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams,
And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness.
And I couldn’t remember the books I read,
Like Frank Drummer who memorized page after page.
And my back was weak, and I worried and worried,
And I was embarrassed and stammered my lessons,
And when I stood up to recite I’d forget
Everything that I had studied.
Well, I saw Dr. Weese’s advertisement,
And there I read everything in print,
Just as if he had known me;
And about the dreams which I couldn’t help.
So I knew I was marked for an early grave.
And I worried until I had a cough,
And then the dreams stopped.
And then I slept the sleep without dreams
Here on the hill by the river.

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–#L17.

Cite this poem

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

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