[
  {
    "title": "The Lost Leader",
    "author": "Robert Browning",
    "lines": [
      "Just for a handful of silver he left us,",
      "  Just for a riband to stick in his coat--",
      "Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,",
      "  Lost all the others she lets us devote;",
      "They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,",
      "  So much was theirs who so little allowed;",
      "How all our copper had gone for his service!",
      "  Rags--were they purple, his heart had been proud!",
      "We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,",
      "  Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,",
      "Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,",
      "  Made him our pattern to live and to die!",
      "Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,",
      "  Burns, Shelley, were with us,--they watch from their graves!",
      "He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,",
      "  He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!",
      "",
      "We shall march prospering--not through his presence;",
      "  Songs may inspirit us,--not from his lyre:",
      "Deeds will be done,--while he boasts his quiescence,",
      "  Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:",
      "Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,",
      "  One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,",
      "One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels,",
      "  One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!",
      "Life's night begins: let him never come back to us!",
      "  There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain,",
      "Forced praise on our part--the glimmer of twilight,",
      "  Never glad confident morning again!",
      "Best fight on well, for we taught him--strike gallantly,",
      "  Menace our heart ere we master his own;",
      "Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,",
      "  Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!"
    ],
    "linecount": "32"
  }
]