{
 "id": "david-park-barnitz/the-grotesques",
 "title": "The Grotesques",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "David Park Barnitz",
 "poet_slug": "david-park-barnitz",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Book of Jade",
 "book_slug": "the-book-of-jade",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 54,
 "container": "Part II",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1901,
  "venue": "The Book of Jade (1901)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/bookofjade00gautiala"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/david-park-barnitz_the-book-of-jade",
  "file": "part-2.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46827",
   "https://archive.org/details/bookofjade00gautiala",
   "https://archive.org/details/sim_overland-monthly-and-out-west-magazine_1901-01_37_1"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 56,
  "n_stanzas": 16,
  "n_parts": 4,
  "longest_line_chars": 54,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [
  {
   "ordinal": "I",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    0,
    4
   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "II",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    4,
    8
   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "III",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    8,
    12
   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "IV",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    12,
    16
   ]
  }
 ],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I saw a dead corpse lying in a tomb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Long buried and rotten to the core;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Behold this corpse shall know not evermore",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Aught that may be outside its wormy room;",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It lies uncover’d in the pesty gloom,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Eyeless and earless, on the charnel-floor,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While in its nameless corpse the wormlets hoar",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Make in its suppurated brain their room.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And in that charnel that no lights illume,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It shriek’d of things that lay outside its door;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And while the still worms through its soft heart bore,",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It lay and reason’d of the ways of doom,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in its head thoughts mov’d as in a womb;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in its heart the worms lie evermore.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I saw a dead corpse in a haughty car,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whom in a high tomb phantom horses bore,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Aye to and fro upon the scatter’d floor;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His dead eyes star’d as though they look’d afar,",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "His gold wheels myriad perish’d souls did mar,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While through his flesh the ravenous wormlets tore;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He in whose eyes the worm was conqueror,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Held his high head unmoved like a star.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And as with loud sound and reverberant jar,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And as with splash of crusht flesh and dull roar,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The death-car thunder’d past the tomb-walls hoar,",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Within those dead dominions the dead tsar",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Receiv’d his plaudits where dead bodies are;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in his heart the worms lie evermore.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I saw a dead corpse making a strange cry,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With dead feet planted on a high tomb’s floor;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The dead stand round, with faces that implore;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His dead hands bless them, stretched forth on high.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "—And art thou God?⁠—and art thou majesty?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And art thou he whom all the dead adore?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And art thou he that hath the skies in store?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nay, nay, dead dust, dead dust, and vanity.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And wouldst thou rise up to the lighted sky?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nay, nay, thy limbs are rotten on the floor;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou shalt not out from thy polluted sty;",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou wouldst become divinity once more,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou dreamest of splendour that shall never die;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in thy heart the worms lie evermore.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I saw a dead corpse lying on the floor",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of a tomb; worms were in its woman’s head,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Its black flesh lay about it shred on shred,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the dead things slept in its bosom hoar.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And evermore inside that loathed door,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It turn’d itself as one upon a bed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It turn’d itself as one whom sleep hath fled,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As one that the sweet pangs of passion bore.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And from its passionate mouth’s corrupted sore,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And from its lips that are no longer red,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Came forth love’s accents; and it spake, and said.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "—The Pleiades and night’s noon-hours are o’er,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I am left alone in wearyhead.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in its heart the worms lie evermore.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}