{
 "id": "edward-thomas/tears",
 "title": "Tears",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 3,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1917,
  "venue": "Poems (1917)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22423"
  ]
 },
 "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": 18,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 56,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "It seems I have no tears left. They should have fallen⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their ghosts, if tears have ghosts, did fall⁠—that day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When twenty hounds streamed by me, not yet combed out",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But still all equals in their rage of gladness",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon the scent, made one, like a great dragon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In Blooming Meadow that bends towards the sun",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And once bore hops: and on that other day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When I stepped out from the double-shadowed Tower",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into an April morning, stirring and sweet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And warm. Strange solitude was there and silence.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A mightier charm than any in the Tower",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Possessed the courtyard. They were changing guard",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Soldiers in line, young English countrymen,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fair-haired and ruddy, in white tunics. Drums",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And fifes were playing “The British Grenadiers.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The men, the music piercing that solitude",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And silence, told me truths I had not dreamed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And have forgotten since their beauty passed.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}