{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/lucinda-matlock",
 "title": "Lucinda Matlock",
 "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": 207,
 "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": 22,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 59,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I went to the dances at Chandlerville,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And played snap-out at Winchester.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One time we changed partners,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then I found Davis.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We were married and lived together for seventy years,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Eight of whom we lost",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ere I had reached the age of sixty.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I made the garden, and for holiday",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And many a flower and medicinal weed⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And passed to a sweet repose.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Degenerate sons and daughters,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Life is too strong for you⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It takes life to love Life.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}