{
 "id": "edward-thomas/i-never-saw-that-land-before",
 "title": "I Never Saw That Land Before",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Last Poems",
 "book_slug": "last-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 1,
 "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": 25,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 42,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I never saw that land before,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And now can never see it again;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet, as if by acquaintance hoar",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Endeared, by gladness and by pain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Great was the affection that I bore",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "To the valley and the river small,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The cattle, the grass, the bare ash trees,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The chickens from the farmsteads, all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Elm-hidden, and the tributaries",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Descending at equal interval;",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The blackthorns down along the brook",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With wounds yellow as crocuses",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where yesterday the labourer’s hook",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had sliced them cleanly; and the breeze",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That hinted all and nothing spoke.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I neither expected anything",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor yet remembered: but some goal",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I touched then; and if I could sing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What would not even whisper my soul",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As I went on my journeying,",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I should use, as the trees and birds did,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A language not to be betrayed;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And what was hid should still be hid",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Excepting from those like me made",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who answer when such whispers bid.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}