{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/jefferson-howard",
 "title": "Jefferson Howard",
 "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": 93,
 "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": 23,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "My valiant fight! For I call it valiant,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With my father’s beliefs from old Virginia:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hating slavery, but no less war.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I, full of spirit, audacity, courage",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thrown into life here in Spoon River,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With its dominant forces drawn from New England,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hating me, yet fearing my arm.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With wife and children heavy to carry⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet fruits of my very zest of life.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And reaping evils I had not sown;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Foe of the church with its charnel dankness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Friend of the human touch of the tavern;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tangled with fates all alien to me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Deserted by hands I called my own.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then just as I felt my giant strength",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Short of breath, behold my children",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had wound their lives in stranger gardens⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I stood alone, as I started alone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My valiant life! I died on my feet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Facing the silence⁠—facing the prospect",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That no one would know of the fight I made.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}