{
 "id": "robert-frost/place-for-a-third",
 "title": "Place for a Third",
 "poet": "Robert Frost",
 "poet_slug": "robert-frost",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Hampshire",
 "book_slug": "new-hampshire",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 10,
 "container": "Notes",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1923,
  "venue": "New Hampshire (1923)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/newhampshirepoem00fros_0",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58611",
   "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7008086"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/robert-frost_new-hampshire",
  "file": "new-hampshire.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58611",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000433611"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 82,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 56,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Nothing to say to all those marriages!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She had made three herself to three of his.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The score was even for them, three to three.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But come to die she found she cared so much:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She thought of children in a burial row;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Three children in a burial row were sad.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One man’s three women in a burial row",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Somehow made her impatient with the man.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And so she said to Laban, “You have done",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A good deal right; don’t do the last thing wrong.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Don’t make me lie with those two other women.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Laban said, No, he would not make her lie",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With anyone but that she had a mind to,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If that was how she felt, of course, he said.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She went her way. But Laban having caught",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This glimpse of lingering person in Eliza,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And anxious to make all he could of it",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With something he remembered in himself,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tried to think how he could exceed his promise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And give good measure to the dead, though thankless.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If that was how she felt, he kept repeating.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His first thought under pressure was a grave",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a new boughten grave plot by herself,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Under he didn’t care how great a stone:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He’d sell a yoke of steers to pay for it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And weren’t there special cemetery flowers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That, once grief sets to growing, grief may rest:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The flowers will go on with grief awhile,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And no one seem neglecting or neglected?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A prudent grief will not despise such aids.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He thought of evergreen and everlasting.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then he had a thought worth many of these.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Somewhere must be the grave of the young boy",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who married her for playmate more than helpmate,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And sometimes laughed at what it was between them.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How would she like to sleep her last with him?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where was his grave? Did Laban know his name?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "He found the grave a town or two away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The headstone cut with John, Beloved Husband,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beside it room reserved, the say a sister’s,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A never-married sister’s of that husband,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whether Eliza would be welcome there.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The dead was bound to silence: ask the sister.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So Laban saw the sister, and, saying nothing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of where Eliza wanted not to lie,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And who had thought to lay her with her first love,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Begged simply for the grave. The sister’s face",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fell all in wrinkles of responsibility.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She wanted to do right. She’d have to think.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Laban was old and poor, yet seemed to care;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And she was old and poor⁠—but she cared, too.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They sat. She cast one dull, old look at him,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then turned him out to go on other errands",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She said he might attend to in the village,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While she made up her mind how much she cared⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And how much Laban cared⁠—and why he cared,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(She made shrewd eyes to see where he came in.)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She’d looked Eliza up her second time,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A widow at her second husband’s grave,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And offered her a home to rest awhile",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before she went the poor man’s widow’s way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Housekeeping for the next man out of wedlock.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She and Eliza had been friends through all.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who was she to judge marriage in a world",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose Bible’s so confused in marriage counsel?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sister had not come across this Laban;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A decent product of life’s ironing-out;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She must not keep him waiting. Time would press",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Between the death day and the funeral day.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So when she saw him coming in the street",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She hurried her decision to be ready",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To meet him with his answer at the door.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Laban had known about what it would be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the way she had set her poor old mouth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To do, as she had put it, what was right.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "She gave it through the screen door closed between them:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“No, not with John. There wouldn’t be no sense.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Eliza’s had too many other men.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Laban was forced to fall back on his plan",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To buy Eliza a plot to lie alone in:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which gives him for himself a choice of lots",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When his time comes to die and settle down.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}