{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/aaron-hatfield",
 "title": "Aaron Hatfield",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edgar Lee Masters",
 "poet_slug": "edgar-lee-masters",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Spoon River Anthology",
 "book_slug": "spoon-river-anthology",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 241,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1916,
  "venue": "Spoon River Anthology (1916)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/spoonriveranthol021mast"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/edgar-lee-masters_spoon-river-anthology",
  "file": "spoon-river-anthology.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://web.archive.org/web/20080723131115/http://spoonriveranthology.net/spoon/river/originalOrder/",
   "https://archive.org/details/spoonriveranthol021mast"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 53,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Better than granite, Spoon River,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is the memory-picture you keep of me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Standing before the pioneer men and women",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There at Concord Church on Communion day.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of Galilee who went to the city",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And was killed by bankers and lawyers;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My voice mingling with the June wind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While the white stones in the burying ground",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And there, though my own memories",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For the sons killed in battle and the daughters",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And little children who vanished in life’s morning,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or at the intolerable hour of noon.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But in those moments of tragic silence,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When the wine and bread were passed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Came the reconciliation for us⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Us the ploughmen and the hewers of wood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Us the peasants, brothers of the peasant of Galilee⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To us came the Comforter",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the consolation of tongues of flame!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}