{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/archibald-higbie",
 "title": "Archibald Higbie",
 "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": 180,
 "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": 21,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 54,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I loathed you, Spoon River. I tried to rise above you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was ashamed of you. I despised you",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As the place of my nativity.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And there in Rome, among the artists,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Speaking Italian, speaking French,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I seemed to myself at times to be free",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of every trace of my origin.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I seemed to be reaching the heights of art",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to breathe the air that the masters breathed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to see the world with their eyes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But still they’d pass my work and say:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“What are you driving at, my friend?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sometimes the face looks like Apollo’s,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At others it has a trace of Lincoln’s.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I burned with shame and held my peace.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And what could I do, all covered over",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And weighted down with western soil,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Except aspire, and pray for another",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rooted out of my soul?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}