{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/willie-metcalf",
 "title": "Willie Metcalf",
 "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": 224,
 "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": 25,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 56,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I was Willie Metcalf.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They used to call me “Doctor Meyers”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because, they said, I looked like him.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I lived in the livery stable,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sleeping on the floor",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Side by side with Roger Baughman’s bulldog,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or sometimes in a stall.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Without getting kicked⁠—we knew each other.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On spring days I tramped through the country",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I was not a separate thing from the earth.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I used to lose myself, as if in sleep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By lying with eyes half-open in the woods.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sometimes I talked with animals⁠—even toads and snakes⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Anything that had an eye to look into.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Once I saw a stone in the sunshine",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Trying to turn into jelly.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In April days in this cemetery",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The dead people gathered all about me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And grew still, like a congregation in silent prayer.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I never knew whether I was a part of the earth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With flowers growing in me, or whether I walked⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now I know.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}