{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/jacob-godbey",
 "title": "Jacob Godbey",
 "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": 145,
 "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": 19,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 59,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "How did you feel, you libertarians,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Around the saloon, as if Liberty",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or at a table, guzzling?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How did you feel, Ben Pantier, and the rest of you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who almost stoned me for a tyrant,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Garbed as a moralist,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And as a wry-faced ascetic frowning upon Yorkshire pudding,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Roast beef and ale and good will and rosy cheer⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Things you never saw in a grog-shop in your life?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How did you feel after I was dead and gone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And your goddess, Liberty, unmasked as a strumpet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Selling out the streets of Spoon River",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the insolent giants",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who manned the saloons from afar?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Did it occur to you that personal liberty",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is liberty of the mind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rather than of the belly?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}