{
 "id": "edward-thomas/the-barn",
 "title": "The Barn",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Last Poems",
 "book_slug": "last-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 33,
 "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": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 6,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "They should never have built a barn there, at all⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Drip, drip, drip!⁠—under that elm tree,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though then it was young. Now it is old",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But good, not like the barn and me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "To-morrow they cut it down. They will leave",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The barn, as I shall be left, maybe.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What holds it up? ’Twould not pay to pull down.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Well, this place has no other antiquity.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "No abbey or castle looks so old",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As this that Job Knight built in ’54,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Built to keep corn for rats and men.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now there’s fowls in the roof, pigs on the floor.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What thatch survives is dung for the grass,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The best grass on the farm. A pity the roof",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Will not bear a mower to mow it. But",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only fowls have foothold enough.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Starlings used to sit there with bubbling throats",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Making a spiky beard as they chattered",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And whistled and kissed, with heads in air,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till they thought of something else that mattered.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But now they cannot find a place,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Among all those holes, for a nest any more.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It’s the turn of lesser things, I suppose.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Once I fancied ’twas starlings they built it for.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}