Well, Lizzie Anderson! seventeen men—and the baby hard to find a father for!
What will the good Father in Heaven say to the local judge if he do not solve this problem? A little two pointed smile and—pouff!— the law is changed into a mouthful of phrases.
Where this text comes from
First published in Sour Grapes: A Book of Poems (1921). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]
Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.
Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/william-carlos-williams_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).
Earlier sources (6)
This poem as JSON or plain text . Line anchors #L1–#L6.
Cite this poem
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963).
“To a Friend.” First published in Sour Grapes: A Book of Poems (1921).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/william-carlos-williams/to-a-friend/.
Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.
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