{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/albert-schirding",
 "title": "Albert Schirding",
 "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": 95,
 "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": {
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  "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": 15,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 60,
  "max_indent": 0
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Jonas Keene thought his lot a hard one",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because his children were all failures.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I know of a fate more trying than that:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is to be a failure while your children are successes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For I raised a brood of eagles",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who flew away at last, leaving me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A crow on the abandoned bough.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then, with the ambition to prefix Honorable to my name,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And thus to win my children’s admiration,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I ran for County Superintendent of Schools,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Spending my accumulations to win⁠—and lost.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That fall my daughter received first prize in Paris",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For her picture, entitled, The Old Mill⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(It was of the water mill before Henry Wilkin put in steam.)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The feeling that I was not worthy of her finished me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}