{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/land-of-the-pilgrims-pride",
 "title": "Land of the Pilgrim’s Pride",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Ambrose Bierce",
 "poet_slug": "ambrose-bierce",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume IV",
 "book_slug": "collected-works-iv",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": "Shapes of Clay",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1910,
  "venue": "The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume IV (1910)",
  "note": "Taken from Volume IV of the Neale collected edition (copyright 1910). That is the printing this text comes from, not the poem's first appearance: the volume's own preface speaks of the verses republished in this volume and the next, and which newspaper or earlier book printed this poem first has not been established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof04bierrich"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/ambrose-bierce_poetry",
  "file": "shapes-of-clay.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",
  "corrections": [
   {
    "line": 53,
    "field": "indent",
    "was": 0,
    "now": 9,
    "why": "Indentation absent from the source markup and measured from the scan: this line starts 26.6 character advances (~13.3 em) right of its own page's base margin, where the verse sets flush. Converted at 3.0 advances per indent level (tools/defects.py indent).",
    "checked_against": "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof04bierrich",
    "date": "2026-08-20"
   },
   {
    "line": 58,
    "field": "indent",
    "was": 0,
    "now": 9,
    "why": "Indentation absent from the source markup and measured from the scan: this line starts 35.5 character advances (~17.8 em) right of its own page's base margin, where the verse sets flush. Converted at 3.0 advances per indent level (tools/defects.py indent).",
    "checked_against": "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof04bierrich",
    "date": "2026-08-20"
   }
  ]
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 62,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 58,
  "max_indent": 9
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I dreamed, and in my dream came one who said:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Because thou art all sullen; and because",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou sayest thou hast not for thy country, love;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because thou dost begrudge the foolish blood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That in the far heroic days thou didst",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Or sayst thou didst) pour from thy riven vein",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In testimony to thy patriot zeal;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because thou seekest ever to promote",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Distrust of the benign and wholesome rule",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the Majority⁠—God’s Ministers;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because thou hearest in the People’s voice",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Naught but the mandate of an idiot will",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Clamoring in the wilderness, but what",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or why it knoweth not; because all this",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And much beside is true, I come⁠—”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Forbear,” I cried, “to name thine errand⁠—all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Too well I know it for the sword, the scales,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The shrouded eyes (albeit methinks I catch",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A twinkle now and then beneath the band)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Speak to my conscience of a traitor’s doom!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strike, then, but hear. To westward, roaring up",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From far beyond the earth’s vast curvature,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Come sounds of discord horrible⁠—the jar",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And thunder of exploding bombs;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The crackle of the flames that eat away",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The means of life of those who kindle them;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The shouts and curses of the robber mob.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Drunk with a sense of numbers⁠—like the wolves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Numerically brave⁠—on ravin bent",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And murder! Hear the moans of honest men,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With shameful by-name vilified, denied",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The right to earn their bread, and with a blind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mad cruelty the devil would weep to see,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beaten and tortured, even by the hands",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the barbarian’s female and his whelps!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Meanwhile the coward rulers of the land",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Prate of ‘the People’s wrongs.’ The coward press",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Thrifty withal to purse a double gain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By two-faced flattery) prates like a fool",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the conservative and saving strength",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of Anglo-Saxon institutions, or",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With magic words, as ‘freedom,’ and the like,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would conjure order from inharmony.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The land is foul with crime, and none declares",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our shame and downfall. Even the women rise",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And seeing the rack and ruin men have wrought,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strip their weak bodies with a silly zeal",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Something to save from the chaotic wreck;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in the reek and sweat of their absurd",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And awkward efforts, lose even what remained⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their own morality and men’s respect.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Therefore I say to you⁠—”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Nay say no more,”",
    "indent": 9
   },
   {
    "text": "Cried she who came into my dream, “for thou",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dost wander. What, pray, has all this to do",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With what thou’rt charged with?⁠—that thou dost not love⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Such as it is⁠—thy country?”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Faith, I would,",
    "indent": 9
   },
   {
    "text": "But ’tis infested by my countrymen!”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What she replied I know not, for a bomb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Spitting and sputtering on my chamber floor.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Awoke me and I fled into the night.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}