{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/granville-calhoun",
 "title": "Granville Calhoun",
 "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": 174,
 "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": 19,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 45,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I wanted to be County Judge",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One more term, so as to round out a service",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of thirty years.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But my friends left me and joined my enemies,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And they elected a new man.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then a spirit of revenge seized me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I infected my four sons with it,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I brooded upon retaliation,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Until the great physician, Nature,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Smote me through with paralysis",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To give my soul and body a rest.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Did my sons get power and money?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Did they serve the people or yoke them,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To till and harvest fields of self?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For how could they ever forget",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My face at my bed-room window,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sitting helpless amid my golden cages",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of singing canaries,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Looking at the old courthouse?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}