{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/robert-davidson",
 "title": "Robert Davidson",
 "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": 108,
 "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": 19,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 59,
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I grew spiritually fat living off the souls of men.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If I saw a soul that was strong",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I wounded its pride and devoured its strength.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The shelters of friendship knew my cunning,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For where I could steal a friend I did so.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And wherever I could enlarge my power",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By undermining ambition, I did so,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thus to make smooth my own.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to triumph over other souls,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Just to assert and prove my superior strength,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was with me a delight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Devouring souls, I should have lived forever.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I collapsed at last with a shriek.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Remember the acorn;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It does not devour other acorns.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}