{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/judge-somers",
 "title": "Judge Somers",
 "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": 12,
 "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": {
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  "file": "spoon-river-anthology.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
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   "https://archive.org/details/spoonriveranthol021mast"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
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  "n_stanzas": 1,
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  "longest_line_chars": 47,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "How does it happen, tell me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I who was most erudite of lawyers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who knew Blackstone and Coke",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The courthouse ever heard, and wrote",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How does it happen, tell me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I lie here unmarked, forgotten,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While Chase Henry, the town drunkard,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Has a marble block, topped by an urn",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Has sown a flowering weed?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}