{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/rosie-roberts",
 "title": "Rosie Roberts",
 "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": 133,
 "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": 15,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 52,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I was sick, but more than that, I was mad",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“I am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gradually wasting away.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But come and take me, I killed the son",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the merchant prince, in Madam Lou’s,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the papers that said he killed himself",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In his home while cleaning a hunting gun⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lied like the devil to hush up scandal,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For the bribe of advertising.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In my room I shot him, at Madam Lou’s,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because he knocked me down when I said",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That, in spite of all the money he had,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’d see my lover that night.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}