{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/jonathan-houghton",
 "title": "Jonathan Houghton",
 "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": 169,
 "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": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 54,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "There is the caw of a crow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the hesitant song of a thrush.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There is the tinkle of a cowbell far away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the voice of a plowman on Shipley’s hill.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The forest beyond the orchard is still",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With midsummer stillness;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And along the road a wagon chuckles,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Loaded with corn, going to Atterbury.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And an old man sits under a tree asleep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And an old woman crosses the road,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Coming from the orchard with a bucket of blackberries.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And a boy lies in the grass",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Near the feet of the old man,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And looks up at the sailing clouds,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And longs, and longs, and longs",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For what, he knows not:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For manhood, for life, for the unknown world!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then thirty years passed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the boy returned worn out by life",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And found the orchard vanished,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the forest gone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the house made over,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the roadway filled with dust from automobiles⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And himself desiring The Hill!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}