{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/a-growler",
 "title": "A Growler",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Ambrose Bierce",
 "poet_slug": "ambrose-bierce",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Black Beetles in Amber",
 "book_slug": "black-beetles-in-amber",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 110,
 "container": "Black Beetles in Amber",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1892,
  "venue": "Black Beetles in Amber (1892)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/blackbeetlesinam00bier"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/ambrose-bierce_poetry",
  "file": "black-beetles-in-amber.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
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   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12658",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12977",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15599",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof04bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof05bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof08bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/shapesofclay00bier",
   "https://archive.org/details/blackbeetlesinam00bier",
   "https://archive.org/details/literarycalifor05mighgoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/cali07webb"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 22,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 45,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Judge Shafter, you’re an aged man, I know,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And learned too, I doubt not, in the law;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And a head white with many a winter’s snow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(I wish, however that your heart would thaw)",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Claims reverence and honor; but the jaw",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "That’s always wagging with a word malign,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nagging and scolding everyone in sight",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "As harshly as a jaybird in a pine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And with as little sense of wrong and right",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "As animates that irritable creature,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is not a very venerable feature.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "You damn all witnesses, all jurors too",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And swear at the attorneys, I suppose,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "(But that’s a far more righteous thing to do)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And what it’s all about, the good Lord knows,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Not you; but all the hotter, fiercer glows",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Your wrath for that⁠—as dogs the louder howl",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With only moonshine to incite their rage,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And bears with more ferocious menace growl,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even when their food is flung into the cage.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Reform, your Honor, and forbear to curse us.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lest all men, hearing you, cry: “Ecce ursus!”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}