{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/george-francis-train",
 "title": "George Francis Train",
 "ordinal": "I",
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Ambrose Bierce",
 "poet_slug": "ambrose-bierce",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Fiend’s Delight",
 "book_slug": "the-fiends-delight",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": "On Stone Some Ante-Mortem Epitaphs",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1873,
  "venue": "The Fiend’s Delight (1873)",
  "note": "Taken from The Fiend's Delight (1873), Bierce's first book. Its preface says what the volume is: the pieces in it are “taken mainly from various Californian journals”. So 1873 is the first book printing located, not the poem's first appearance, and which newspaper printed it first has not been established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4793"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/ambrose-bierce_poetry",
  "file": "on-stone.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": 28,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 37,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Beneath this casket rots unknown",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A Thing that merits not a stone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Save that by passing urchin cast;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose fame and virtues we express",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By transient urn of emptiness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With apt inscription (to its past",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Relating⁠—and to his): “Prime Mess.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "No honour had this infidel,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That doth not appertain, as well,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To haltered caitiff on the drop;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "No wit that would not likewise pass",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For wisdom in the famished ass",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who breaks his neck a weed to crop,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "When tethered in the luscious grass.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And now, thank God, his hateful name",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall never rescued be from shame,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though seas of venal ink be shed;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "No sophistry shall reconcile",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With sympathy for Erin’s Isle,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or sorrow for her patriot dead,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The weeping of this crocodile.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Life’s incongruity is past,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And dirt to dirt is seen at last,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The worm of worm afoul doth fall.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The sexton tolls his solemn bell",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For scoundrel dead and gone to⁠—well,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It matters not, it can’t recall",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "This convict from his final cell.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}