{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/samuel-gardner",
 "title": "Samuel Gardner",
 "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": 217,
 "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": 52,
  "max_indent": 0
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I who kept the greenhouse,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lover of trees and flowers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Measuring its generous branches with my eye,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And listened to its rejoicing leaves",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lovingly patting each other",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With sweet aeolian whispers.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And well they might:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For the roots had grown so wide and deep",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That the soil of the hill could not withhold",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Aught of its virtue, enriched by rain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And warmed by the sun;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But yielded it all to the thrifty roots,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through which it was drawn and whirled to the trunk,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And thence to the branches, and into the leaves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wherefrom the breeze took life and sang.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now I, an under-tenant of the earth, can see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That the branches of a tree",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Spread no wider than its roots.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And how shall the soul of a man",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be larger than the life he has lived?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}