{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/pauline-barrett",
 "title": "Pauline Barrett",
 "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": 87,
 "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": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 61,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Almost the shell of a woman after the surgeon’s knife!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And almost a year to creep back into strength,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till the dawn of our wedding decennial",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Found me my seeming self again.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We walked the forest together,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By a path of soundless moss and turf.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I could not look in your eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And you could not look in my eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For such sorrow was ours⁠—the beginning of gray in your hair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I but a shell of myself.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And what did we talk of?⁠—sky and water,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Anything, ’most, to hide our thoughts.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then your gift of wild roses,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Set on the table to grace our dinner.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Poor heart, how bravely you struggled",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To imagine and live a remembered rapture!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then my spirit drooped as the night came on,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And you left me alone in my room for a while,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As you did when I was a bride, poor heart.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I looked in the mirror and something said:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“One should be all dead when one is half-dead⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor ever mock life, nor ever cheat love.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I did it looking there in the mirror⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dear, have you ever understood?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}