{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/seth-compton",
 "title": "Seth Compton",
 "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": 163,
 "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": 53,
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "When I died, the circulating library",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which I built up for Spoon River,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And managed for the good of inquiring minds,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was sold at auction on the public square,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As if to destroy the last vestige",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of my memory and influence.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For those of you who could not see the virtue",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of knowing Volney’s Ruins as well as Butler’s Analogy",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Faust as well as Evangeline,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were really the power in the village,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And often you asked me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am out of your way now, Spoon River,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Choose your own good and call it good.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For I could never make you see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That no one knows what is good",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who knows not what is evil;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And no one knows what is true",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who knows not what is false.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}