{
 "id": "edward-thomas/ambition",
 "title": "Ambition",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Last Poems",
 "book_slug": "last-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 52,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1918,
  "venue": "Last Poems (1918)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22732"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/edward-thomas_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22423",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22732",
   "https://www.google.com/books/edition/Collected_Poems/LMsEAQAAIAAJ",
   "https://www.google.com/books/edition/Two_Poems/3ycPAAAAQAAJ"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 26,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Unless it was that day I never knew",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ambition. After a night of frost, before",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The March sun brightened and the South-west blew,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Jackdaws began to shout and float and soar",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Already, and one was racing straight and high",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Alone, shouting like a black warrior",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Challenges and menaces to the wide sky.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With loud long laughter then a woodpecker",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ridiculed the sadness of the owl’s last cry.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And through the valley where all the folk astir",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Made only plumes of pearly smoke to tower",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Over dark trees and white meadows happier",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than was Elysium in that happy hour,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A train that roared along raised after it",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And carried with it a motionless white bower",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of purest cloud, from end to end close-knit,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So fair it touched the roar with silence. Time",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was powerless while that lasted. I could sit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And think I had made the loveliness of prime,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Breathed its life into it and were its lord,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And no mind lived save this ’twixt clouds and rime.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Omnipotent I was, nor even deplored",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I did nothing. But the end fell like a bell:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The bower was scattered; far off the train roared.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But if this was ambition I cannot tell.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What ’twas ambition for I know not well.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}