{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/elsa-wertman",
 "title": "Elsa Wertman",
 "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": 109,
 "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": 23,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 66,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I was a peasant girl from Germany,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene’s.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On a summer’s day when she was away",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He stole into the kitchen and took me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I turning my head. Then neither of us",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Seemed to know what happened.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I cried for what would become of me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And cried and cried as my secret began to show.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One day Mrs. Greene said she understood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And would make no trouble for me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, being childless, would adopt it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(He had given her a farm to be still.)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So she hid in the house and sent out rumors,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As if it were going to happen to her.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all went well and the child was born⁠—They were so kind to me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Later I married Gus Wertman, and years passed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But⁠—at political rallies when sitters-by thought I was crying",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That was not it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No! I wanted to say:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That’s my son! That’s my son!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}