{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/herman-altman",
 "title": "Herman Altman",
 "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": 209,
 "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": 60,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Did I follow Truth wherever she led,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And stand against the whole world for a cause,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And uphold the weak against the strong?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If I did I would be remembered among men",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As I was known in life among the people,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And as I was hated and loved on earth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Therefore, build no monument to me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And carve no bust for me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lest, though I become not a demi-god,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The reality of my soul be lost,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So that thieves and liars,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who were my enemies and destroyed me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the children of thieves and liars,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "May claim me and affirm before my bust",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That they stood with me in the days of my defeat.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Build me no monument",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lest my memory be perverted to the uses",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of lying and oppression.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My lovers and their children must not be dispossessed of me;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I would be the untarnished possession forever",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of those for whom I lived.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}