{
 "id": "frances-ellen-watkins-harper/the-fugitives-wife",
 "title": "The Fugitive’s Wife",
 "poet": "Frances Ellen Watkins Harper",
 "poet_slug": "frances-ellen-watkins-harper",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects",
 "book_slug": "poems-on-miscellaneous-subjects",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1854,
  "venue": "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsonmiscellan00harp",
   "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42194389"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/frances-ellen-watkins-harper_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
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   "https://archive.org/details/poemsonmiscellan00harp",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/frances-ew-harper-poems-1871",
   "https://archive.org/details/poems01harp",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69249",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007491600",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69248",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100774124",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/frances-ew-harper-poems-full-text-1895",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100488369",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/frances-ew-harper-idylls-of-the-bible-1901",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100319488",
   "https://archive.org/details/historyofafrican00payn",
   "https://archive.org/details/WeeklyAngloAfricanI",
   "https://archive.org/details/sim_liberator_1858-05-14_28_20",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000500702",
   "https://archive.org/details/undergroundrailr00stil",
   "https://archive.org/details/frances-ellen-watkins-harper_sketches-of-southern-life-1872",
   "https://archive.org/details/25th-annual-report-of-the-board-of-managers-of-the-home-etc",
   "https://archive.org/details/frances-ellen-watkins-harper_light-beyond-the-darkness",
   "https://archive.org/details/ame-church-review-1900-04"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 28,
  "n_stanzas": 7,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 38,
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 },
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 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "It was my sad and weary lot",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To toil in slavery;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But one thing cheered my lowly cot⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My husband was with me.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "One evening, as our children played",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Around our cabin door,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I noticed on his brow a shade",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’d never seen before;",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And in his eyes a gloomy night",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of anguish and despair;⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I gazed upon their troubled light,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To read the meaning there.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "He strained me to his heaving heart⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My own beat wild with fear;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I knew not, but I sadly felt",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There must be evil near.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "He vainly strove to cast aside",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The tears that fell like rain:⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Too frail, indeed, is manly pride,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To strive with grief and pain.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Again he clasped me to his breast,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And said that we must part:",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I tried to speak⁠—but, oh! it seemed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "An arrow reached my heart.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“Bear not!” I cried, “unto your grave,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The yoke you’ve borne from birth;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "No longer live a helpless slave,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The meanest thing on earth!”",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}