{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/harlan-sewall",
 "title": "Harlan Sewall",
 "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": 191,
 "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": 56,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "You never understood, O unknown one,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why it was I repaid",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "First with diminished thanks,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So that I might not be compelled to thank you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then with silence which followed upon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our final Separation.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You had cured my diseased soul. But to cure it",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You saw my disease, you knew my secret,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that is why I fled from you.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For though when our bodies rise from pain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We kiss forever the watchful hands",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That gave us wormwood, while we shudder",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For thinking of the wormwood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A soul that’s cured is a different matter,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For there we’d blot from memory",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The soft-toned words, the searching eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And stand forever oblivious,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not so much of the sorrow itself",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As of the hand that healed it.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}