{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/russell-kincaid",
 "title": "Russell Kincaid",
 "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": 240,
 "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": 21,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 46,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "In the last spring I ever knew,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In those last days,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I sat in the forsaken orchard",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The hills at Miller’s Ford;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Just to muse on the apple tree",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With its ruined trunk and blasted branches,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Never to grow in fruit.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And there was I with my spirit girded",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By the flesh half dead, the senses numb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Such phantom blossoms palely shining",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Over the lifeless boughs of Time.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had I been only a tree to shiver",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With dreams of spring and a leafy youth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then I had fallen in the cyclone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which swept me out of the soul’s suspense",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where it’s neither earth nor heaven.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}