{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/w-lloyd-garrison-standard",
 "title": "W. Lloyd Garrison Standard",
 "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": 129,
 "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": {
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  "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": 18,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 63,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Vegetarian, non-resistant, free-thinker, in ethics a Christian;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhythm of Ingersoll;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Carnivorous, avenger, believer and pagan;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Continent, promiscuous, changeable, treacherous, vain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Proud, with the pride that makes struggle a thing for laughter;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With heart cored out by the worm of theatric despair;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wearing the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I, child of the abolitionist idealism⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A sort of Brand in a birth of half-and-half.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What other thing could happen when I defended",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The patriot scamps who burned the court house,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That Spoon River might have a new one,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than plead them guilty? When Kinsey Keene drove through",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The card-board mask of my life with a spear of light,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What could I do but slink away, like the beast of myself",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which I raised from a whelp, to a corner and growl.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The pyramid of my life was nought but a dune,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Barren and formless, spoiled at last by the storm.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}