{
 "id": "edward-thomas/house-and-man",
 "title": "House and Man",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Last Poems",
 "book_slug": "last-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 63,
 "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": 21,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 55,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "One hour: as dim he and his house now look",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As a reflection in a rippling brook,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While I remember him; but first, his house.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Empty it sounded. It was dark with forest boughs",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That brushed the walls and made the mossy tiles",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Part of the squirrels’ track. In all those miles",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of forest silence and forest murmur, only",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One house⁠—“Lonely!” he said, “I wish it were lonely”⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which the trees looked upon from every side,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that was his.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "He waved good-bye to hide",
    "indent": 0,
    "align": "right"
   },
   {
    "text": "A sigh that he converted to a laugh.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He seemed to hang rather than stand there, half",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ghost-like, half like a beggar’s rag, clean wrung",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And useless on the brier where it has hung",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Long years a-washing by sun and wind and rain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But why I call back man and house again",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is that now on a beech-tree’s tip I see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As then I saw⁠—I at the gate, and he",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the house darkness⁠—a magpie veering about,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A magpie like a weathercock in doubt.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}