{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/mrs-merritt",
 "title": "Mrs. Merritt",
 "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": 182,
 "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": 17,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 52,
  "max_indent": 0
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Silent before the jury,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Returning no word to the judge when he asked me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If I had aught to say against the sentence,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only shaking my head.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What could I say to people who thought",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That a woman of thirty-five was at fault",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When her lover of nineteen killed her husband?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even though she had said to him over and over,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Go away, Elmer, go far away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You will do some terrible thing.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And just as I feared, he killed my husband;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With which I had nothing to do, before God!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Silent for thirty years in prison!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the iron gates of Joliet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Swung as the gray and silent trusties",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Carried me out in a coffin.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}