{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/science",
 "title": "Science",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Ambrose Bierce",
 "poet_slug": "ambrose-bierce",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poetry",
 "book_slug": null,
 "book_kind": "compilation",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": "Uncollected Verse",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1918,
  "venue": "Literary California: Poetry, Prose and Portraits, ed. Ella Sterling Mighels (San Francisco, Harr Wagner, 1918)",
  "note": "This anthology is the only printing of the poem the corpus has located, and it is certainly not the first: Mighels gathers work from the whole of nineteenth-century California, credits no earlier source for this piece, and signs it “Ambrose C. Bierce”. Where and when it first appeared has not been established.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/literarycalifor05mighgoog"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/ambrose-bierce_poetry",
  "file": "uncollected-verse.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": 14,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 50,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "The winds of heaven trample down the pines",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or creep in lazy tides along the lea;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Lead the wild waters from the smitten rock.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or crawl with childish babble to the sea;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But why the tempests out of heaven blow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or what the purpose of the seaward flow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No man hath known, and none shall ever know.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Why seek to know? To follow nature up",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Against the current of her course, why care?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Vain is the toil; he’s wisest still who knows",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All science is but formulated prayer⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Prayer for the warm winds and the quickening rain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Prayer for sharp sickle and for laboring swain.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To gather from the planted past the grain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}