{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/nellie-clark",
 "title": "Nellie Clark",
 "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": 61,
 "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": 15,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 54,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I was only eight years old;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And before I grew up and knew what it meant",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I had no words for it, except",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I was frightened and told my Mother;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that my Father got a pistol",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fifteen years old, except for his Mother.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nevertheless the story clung to me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the man who married me, a widower of thirty-five,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was a newcomer and never heard it",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till two years after we were married.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then he considered himself cheated,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the village agreed that I was not really a virgin.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Well, he deserted me, and I died",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The following winter.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}