{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/thomas-ross-jr",
 "title": "Thomas Ross, Jr.",
 "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": 91,
 "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": 46,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "This I saw with my own eyes:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A cliff-swallow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Made her nest in a hole of the high clay-bank",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There near Miller’s Ford.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But no sooner were the young hatched",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than a snake crawled up to the nest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To devour the brood.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then the mother swallow with swift flutterings",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And shrill cries",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fought at the snake,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blinding him with the beat of her wings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Until he, wriggling and rearing his head,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fell backward down the bank",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into Spoon River and was drowned.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Scarcely an hour passed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Until a shrike",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Impaled the mother swallow on a thorn.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As for myself I overcame my lower nature",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only to be destroyed by my brother’s ambition.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}