{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/john-wasson",
 "title": "John Wasson",
 "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": 195,
 "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": 67,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Oh! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lengthening out the farewell to me off to the war with the British,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then the long, hard years down to the day of Yorktown.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then my search for Rebecca,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Finding her at last in Virginia,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Two children dead in the meanwhile.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We went by oxen to Tennessee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thence after years to Illinois,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At last to Spoon River.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We cut the buffalo grass,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We felled the forests,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We built the school houses, built the bridges,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leveled the roads and tilled the fields",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Alone with poverty, scourges, death⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If Harry Wilmans who fought the Filipinos",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is to have a flag on his grave",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Take it from mine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}