{
 "id": "edward-thomas/aspens",
 "title": "Aspens",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Last Poems",
 "book_slug": "last-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 49,
 "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": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 6,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "All day and night, save winter, every weather,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The aspens at the cross-roads talk together",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Out of the blacksmith’s cavern comes the ringing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the inn",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sounds that for these fifty years have been.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The whisper of the aspens is not drowned,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And over lightless pane and footless road,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Empty as sky, with every other sound",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode,",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "A silent smithy, a silent inn, nor fails",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In tempest or the night of nightingales,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And it would be the same were no house near.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Over all sorts of weather, men, and times,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Aspens must shake their leaves and men may hear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But need not listen, more than to my rhymes.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We cannot other than an aspen be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or so men think who like a different tree.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}