{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/the-retrospective-bird",
 "title": "The Retrospective Bird",
 "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": 33,
 "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"
  ]
 },
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  "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": {
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  [
   {
    "text": "His caw is a cackle, his eye is dim,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And he mopes all day on the lowest limb;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Not a word says he, but he snaps his bill",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And twitches his palsied head, as a quill,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The ultimate plume of his pride and hope,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Quits his now featherless nose-o’-the-Pope,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leaving that eminence brown and bare,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Exposed to the Prince of the Power of the Air.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And he sits and he thinks: “I’m an old, old man,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mateless and chickless, the last of my clan,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I’d give the half of the days gone by",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To perch once more on the branches high,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And hear my great-grand-daddy’s comical croaks",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In authorized versions of Bulletin jokes.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}