{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/arboriculture",
 "title": "Arboriculture",
 "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": null,
 "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": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4793",
   "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": 21,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 52,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "You may say they won’t grow, and say they’ll decay⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Say it again till you’re sick of the say,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Get up on your ear, blow your blaring bazoo",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And hire a hall to proclaim it; and you",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "May stand on a stump with a lifted hand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As a pine may stand or a redwood stand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And stick to your story and cheek it through.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I point with pride to the far divide",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the Snake from its groves is seen to glide⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To Mariposa’s arboreal suit,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the shaggy shoulders of Shasta Butte,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the feathered firs of Siskiyou;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I swear as I sit on my marvelous hair⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I roll my marvelous eyes and swear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And sneer, and ask where would your forests be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To-day if it hadn’t been for me!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then I rise tip-toe, with a brow of brass,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like a bully boy with an eye of glass;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I look at my gum sprouts, red and blue,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I say it loud and I say it low:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“They know their man and you bet they’ll grow!”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}