{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/a-coward",
 "title": "A Coward",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Ambrose Bierce",
 "poet_slug": "ambrose-bierce",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Black Beetles in Amber",
 "book_slug": "black-beetles-in-amber",
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 "container": "Black Beetles in Amber",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1892,
  "venue": "Black Beetles in Amber (1892)",
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  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
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  [
   {
    "text": "When Marriot, distressed by an “attack,”",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Has the strange insolence to answer back",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "He hides behind a name that is a lie,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And out of shadow falters his reply.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "God knows him, though⁠—identified alike",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "By hardihood to rise and fear to strike,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And fitly to rebuke his sins decrees,",
    "indent": 1
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   {
    "text": "That, hide from others with what care he please,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Night shan’t be black enough nor earth so wide",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "That from himself himself can ever hide!",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Hard fate indeed to feel at every breath",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "His burden of identity till death!⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "No moment’s respite from the immortal load,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To think himself a serpent or a toad,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Or dream, with a divine, ecstatic glow,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "He’s long been dead and canonized a crow!",
    "indent": 1
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 ]
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