{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/elizabeth-childers",
 "title": "Elizabeth Childers",
 "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": 184,
 "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": 26,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 52,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Dust of my dust,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And dust with my dust,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O, child who died as you entered the world,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dead with my death!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not knowing Breath, though you tried so hard,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With a heart that beat when you lived with me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And stopped when you left me for Life.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is well, my child. For you never traveled",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The long, long way that begins with school days,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When little fingers blur under the tears",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That fall on the crooked letters.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the earliest wound, when a little mate",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leaves you alone for another;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And sickness, and the face of Fear by the bed;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The death of a father or mother;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or shame for them, or poverty;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The maiden sorrow of school days ended;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And eyeless Nature that makes you drink",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the cup of Love, though you know it’s poisoned;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To whom would your flower-face have been lifted?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Botanist, weakling? Cry of what blood to yours?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pure or foul, for it makes no matter,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It’s blood that calls to our blood.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then your children⁠—oh, what might they be?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And what your sorrow? Child! Child!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Death is better than Life!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}