{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/harmon-whitney",
 "title": "Harmon Whitney",
 "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": 139,
 "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": 55,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Out of the lights and roar of cities,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But to hide a wounded pride as well.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I, gifted with tongues and wisdom,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sunk here to the dust of the justice court,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I, whom fortune smiled on! I in a village,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Out of the lore of golden years,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When they bought the drinks to kindle my dying mind.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To be judged by you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The soul of me hidden from you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With its wound gangrened",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By love for a wife who made the wound,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With her cold white bosom, treasonous, pure and hard,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Relentless to the last, when the touch of her hand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At any time, might have cured me of the typhus,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And only to think that my soul could not re-act,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like Byron’s did, in song, in something noble,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But turned on itself like a tortured snake⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Judge me this way, O world!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}