{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/henry-phipps",
 "title": "Henry Phipps",
 "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": 193,
 "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": 30,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 70,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I was the Sunday school superintendent,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The dummy president of the wagon works",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the canning factory,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My son the cashier of the bank,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wedded to Rhodes’ daughter,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My week days spent in making money,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My Sundays at church and in prayer.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In everything a cog in the wheel of things-as-they-are:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of money, master and man, made white",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With the paint of the Christian creed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The bank collapsed. I stood and looked at the wrecked machine⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The rotten bolts, the broken rods;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a new devourer of life, when newspapers, judges and money-magicians",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Build over again.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was stripped to the bone, but I lay in the Rock of Ages,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Seeing now through the game, no longer a dupe,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And knowing “the upright shall dwell in the land",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the years of the wicked shall be shortened.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then suddenly, Dr. Meyers discovered",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A cancer in my liver.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was not, after all, the particular care of God!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why, even thus standing on a peak",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Above the mists through which I had climbed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And ready for larger life in the world,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Eternal forces",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Moved me on with a push.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}