{
 "id": "edward-thomas/february-afternoon",
 "title": "February Afternoon",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Last Poems",
 "book_slug": "last-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 8,
 "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": 14,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 53,
  "max_indent": 1
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 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Men heard this roar of parleying starlings, saw,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A thousand years ago even as now,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Black rooks with white gulls following the plough",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "So that the first are last until a caw",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Commands that last are first again⁠—a law",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which was of old when one, like me, dreamed how",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "A thousand years might dust lie on his brow",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet thus would birds do between hedge and shaw.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Time swims before me, making as a day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A thousand years, while the broad ploughland oak",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Roars mill-like and men strike and bear the stroke",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of war as ever, audacious or resigned,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And God still sits aloft in the array",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That we have wrought him, stone-deaf and stone-blind.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}