{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/many-soldiers",
 "title": "Many Soldiers",
 "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": 196,
 "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": 54,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "The idea danced before us as a flag;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sound of martial music;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The thrill of carrying a gun;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Advancement in the world on coming home;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A glint of glory, wrath for foes;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A dream of duty to country or to God.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But these were things in ourselves, shining before us,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They were not the power behind us,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which was the Almighty hand of Life,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like fire at earth’s center making mountains,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or pent up waters that cut them through.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Do you remember the iron band",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The blacksmith, Shack Dye, welded",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Around the oak on Bennet’s lawn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From which to swing a hammock,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That daughter Janet might repose in, reading",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On summer afternoons?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that the growing tree at last",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sundered the iron band?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But not a cell in all the tree",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Knew aught save that it thrilled with life,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor cared because the hammock fell",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the dust with Milton’s Poems.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}