{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/caroline-branson",
 "title": "Caroline Branson",
 "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": 199,
 "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": 45,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 54,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As often before, the April fields till star-light",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like notes of music that run together, into winning,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the inspired improvisation of love!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But to put back of us as a canticle ended",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The rapt enchantment of the flesh,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In which our souls swooned, down, down,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Annihilated in love!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To leave these behind for a room with lamps:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to stand with our Secret mocking itself,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stared at by all between salad and coffee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to see him tremble, and feel myself",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Prescient, as one who signs a bond⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With rosy hands over his brow.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Next day he sat so listless, almost cold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So strangely changed, wondering why I wept,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Seized us to make the pact of death.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "A stalk of the earth-sphere,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Frail as star-light;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Waiting to be drawn once again",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into creation’s stream.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But next time to be given birth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gazed at by Raphael and St. Francis",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sometimes as they pass.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For I am their little brother,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To be known clearly face to face",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through a cycle of birth hereafter run.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You may know the seed and the soil;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You may feel the cold rain fall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But only the earth-sphere, only heaven",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Knows the secret of the seed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the nuptial chamber under the soil.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Throw me into the stream again,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Give me another trial⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Save me, Shelley!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}