{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/reuben-pantier",
 "title": "Reuben Pantier",
 "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": 16,
 "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": 25,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Well, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your love was not all in vain.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I owe whatever I was in life",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To your hope that would not give me up,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To your love that saw me still as good.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell you the story.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I pass the effect of my father and mother;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The milliner’s daughter made me trouble",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And out I went in the world,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where I passed through every peril known",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of wine and women and joy of life.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One night, in a room in the Rue de Rivoli,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was drinking wine with a black-eyed cocotte,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the tears swam into my eyes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She thought they were amorous tears and smiled",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For thought of her conquest over me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But my soul was three thousand miles away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the days when you taught me in Spoon River.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And just because you no more could love me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor pray for me, nor write me letters,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The eternal silence of you spoke instead.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the Black-eyed cocotte took the tears for hers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As well as the deceiving kisses I gave her.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Somehow, from that hour, I had a new vision⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dear Emily Sparks!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}