{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/wallace-ferguson",
 "title": "Wallace Ferguson",
 "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": 212,
 "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": 18,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 56,
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  [
   {
    "text": "There at Geneva where Mt. Blanc floated above",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The wine-hued lake like a cloud, when a breeze was blown",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Out of an empty sky of blue, and the roaring Rhone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hurried under the bridge through chasms of rock;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the music along the cafés was part of the splendor",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of dancing water under a torrent of light;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the purer part of the genius of Jean Rousseau",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was the silent music of all we saw or heard⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There at Geneva, I say, was the rapture less",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because I could not link myself with the I of yore,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When twenty years before I wandered about Spoon River?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor remember what I was nor what I felt?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We live in the hour all free of the hours gone by.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Therefore, O soul, if you lose yourself in death,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And wake in some Geneva by some Mt. Blanc,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What do you care if you know not yourself as the you",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who lived and loved in a little corner of earth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Known as Spoon River ages and ages vanished?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}