{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/theodore-the-poet",
 "title": "Theodore the Poet",
 "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": 40,
 "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": 17,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 63,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On the shore of the turbid Spoon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish’s burrow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "First his waving antennae, like straws of hay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And soon his body, colored like soap-stone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gemmed with eyes of jet.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And you wondered in a trance of thought",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But later your vision watched for men and women",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Looking for the souls of them to come out,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So that you could see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How they lived, and for what,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And why they kept crawling so busily",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Along the sandy way where water fails",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As the summer wanes.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}