{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/professor-newcomer",
 "title": "Professor Newcomer",
 "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": 130,
 "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": 16,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 54,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Everyone laughed at Col. Prichard",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For buying an engine so powerful",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That it wrecked itself, and wrecked the grinder",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He ran it with.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But here is a joke of cosmic size:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The urge of nature that made a man",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Evolve from his brain a spiritual life⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh miracle of the world!⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The very same brain with which the ape and wolf",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Get food and shelter and procreate themselves.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nature has made man do this,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a world where she gives him nothing to do",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "After all⁠—(though the strength of his soul goes round",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a futile waste of power,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To gear itself to the mills of the gods)⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But get food and shelter and procreate himself!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}