Edgar Lee Master: Poetry Analysis

“All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill,” these words by Edgar Lee Master set the stage for a beautifully written and insightful piece of literature. Every epitaph is written with its own personality and motif. These different motifs are; regret, peace through death, guilt, life, and equality. With many of the epitaphs being about death, many of the people in the epitaphs look back with regret. With a large portion of the poems being about regret, there are some that show the theme much better than others. Fletcher McGee, Harold Arnett, and Dr. Siegfried Iseman are the three poems that illustrate the motif of regret perfectly.
The first of the three poems to show the theme of regret is, Fletcher McGee. This poem offers a very …show more content…
Siegfried Iseman. The character of Dr. Siegfried Iseman, is one of a man with good intentions turned bad. He was a doctor that had christian principles, and wanted to keep those while practicing medicine. However, as he continued his career, he figured out that having morals was driving his business into the ground. He then ended up in jail because of a phony elixir of youth. “The Christian creed and wife and children all on your back, it is too much!” He shows that trying to be a just man in an unjust world is impossible. “Branded a swindler and a crook by the upright Federal Judge.” The quote here shows that he is regretful of the choices he made, but he knows that even when people act just, they aren’t.
In these three poems Edgar Lee Masters’ perfectly shows how regret is so prevalent in people’s lives. The regret of these everyday people turned their lives into either death or jail. Masters’ paints a clear picture that regret in someone’s life can turn it from good intentions to a black abyss. The three poems perfectly illustrate the motif of regret. The point of Masters’ showing the reader this is to deter them to feeling regret. Even if life is hard, or you follow a certain rule set you need to go all out with