{
 "id": "edward-thomas/the-ash-grove",
 "title": "The Ash Grove",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Last Poems",
 "book_slug": "last-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 4,
 "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": 16,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 64,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Half of the grove stood dead, and those that yet lived made",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Little more than the dead ones made of shade.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If they led to a house, long before they had seen its fall:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But they welcomed me; I was glad without cause and delayed.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Scarce a hundred paces under the trees was the Interval⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Paces each sweeter than sweetest miles⁠—but nothing at all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not even the spirits of memory and fear with restless wing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Could climb down in to molest me over the wall",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "That I passed through at either end without noticing.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And now an ash grove far from those hills can bring",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The same tranquillity in which I wander a ghost",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With a ghostly gladness, as if I heard a girl sing",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The song of the Ash Grove soft as love uncrossed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then in a crowd or in distance it were lost,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the moment unveiled something unwilling to die",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I had what most I desired, without search or desert or cost.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}