{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/harold-arnett",
 "title": "Harold Arnett",
 "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": 46,
 "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": 17,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 64,
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I leaned against the mantel, sick, sick,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Weak from the noon-day heat.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A church bell sounded mournfully far away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I heard the cry of a baby,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the coughing of John Yarnell,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then the violent voice of my wife:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Watch out, the potatoes are burning!”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I smelled them⁠ ⁠… then there was irresistible disgust.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I pulled the trigger⁠ ⁠… blackness⁠ ⁠… light⁠ ⁠…",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unspeakable regret⁠ ⁠… fumbling for the world again.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Too late! Thus I came here,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With lungs for breathing⁠ ⁠… one cannot breathe here with lungs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though one must breathe.⁠ ⁠… Of what use is it",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To rid one’s self of the world,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When no soul may ever escape the eternal destiny of life?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}