{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/paul-mcneely",
 "title": "Paul McNeely",
 "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": 100,
 "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": 20,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 53,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Dear Jane! dear winsome Jane!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How you stole in the room (where I lay so ill)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In your nurse’s cap and linen cuffs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And took my hand and said with a smile:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“You are not so ill⁠—you’ll soon be well.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And how the liquid thought of your eyes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sank in my eyes like dew that slips",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into the heart of a flower.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dear Jane! the whole McNeely fortune",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Could not have bought your care of me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By day and night, and night and day;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor paid for your smile, nor the warmth of your soul,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In your little hands laid on my brow.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Jane, till the flame of life went out",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the dark above the disk of night",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I longed and hoped to be well again",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To pillow my head on your little breasts,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And hold you fast in a clasp of love⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Did my father provide for you when he died,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Jane, dear Jane?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}