{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/to-one-in-custody",
 "title": "To One in Custody",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Ambrose Bierce",
 "poet_slug": "ambrose-bierce",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume V",
 "book_slug": "collected-works-v",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 49,
 "container": "Black Beetles in Amber",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1911,
  "venue": "The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume V (1911)",
  "note": "Taken from Volume V of the Neale collected edition (copyright 1911). That is the printing this text comes from, not the poem's first appearance: the volume's own preface states that most of its verses are republished from newspapers and periodicals of the Pacific Coast, and which of them printed this poem first has not been established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof05bierrich"
  ]
 },
 "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": 19,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Villain! for years you’ve plied your awful trade",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For wife, for widow and⁠—no, not for maid:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even you’ll confess in chastity one true",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Advantage⁠—its immunity from you.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "About your hand, in clamorous appeal,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As round the blade of Calmar, shriek and wheel,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like flights of Arctic seabirds, the forlorn",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pale ghosts⁠—mothers and babes unborn.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now, villain, now, I pray your time has come⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mercy be deaf and intercession dumb!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No more, red-handed, in the path to life",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "May you be found alurk with eager knife,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor longer o’er the door to death display",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sign, “For Ladies.” Lo! day after day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For twenty years I’ve read on every wall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A handwriting prophetic of your fall.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And now the last dread syllable I spell",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That damns your body to a felon’s cell⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your soul has long awaited you in Hell!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}