Poetry Analysis - - The Village Atheist
             "The world and it's desires pass away; but, the man who does the will of God will live Forever."
             Using literary and poetic devises to stress the importance of hope, intuition, and desire over worldly objects, The Village Atheist warns that one must strive mightily toward immortality by taking a chance on something unseen and intangible. Edgar Lee Masters, author of Spoon River Anthology uses free verse, sarcasm and allusions to make the message a personal one that is easy to relate to. In addition, Masters utilizes isolation, metaphors, and a balanced antithesis to emphasize the importance of religion in daily live, and the futility of living in this world only.
             The poem entitled "The Village Atheist" is about man who refused to believe in God until eh was undertaken with sickness, and began a slow painful death. It was then that he began to read "the Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus." In his epitaph he urges the living to do the same because he is now enlightened of the truth: God exists and in order to achieve immortality one must take drastic steps of faith.
             Masters uses no regular meter or rhyming scheme in this poem. This free verse poetry sounds like a personal conversation. Masters does this in order to personalize the poem because it is meant to be striking and profound, changing the ways of one who hears it.
             In line 2, the Village Atheist has a sarcastic tone. Believing that a human who lives in the senses cannot understand the supernatural world, he is mocking toward the "young debaters over... the souls immortality." Masters uses sarcasm here in order to emphasize the foolishness of the infidels, who try to try to cynically understand the doctrine of immortality.
             Masters isolates key phrases several times in this poem. This isolation is used for emphasis. In line 5, he isolates "of the infidels" in order to make the point that being talkative, content
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