{
 "id": "edward-thomas/the-gypsy",
 "title": "The Gypsy",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Last Poems",
 "book_slug": "last-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 64,
 "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": 28,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 70,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "A fortnight before Christmas Gypsies were everywhere:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Vans were drawn up on wastes, women trailed to the fair.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“My gentleman,” said one, “you’ve got a lucky face.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“And you’ve a luckier,” I thought, “if such a grace",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And impudence in rags are lucky.” “Give a penny",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For the poor baby’s sake.” “Indeed I have not any",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unless you can give change for a sovereign, my dear.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Then just half a pipeful of tobacco can you spare?”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I gave it. With that much victory she laughed content.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I should have given more, but off and away she went",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With her baby and her pink sham flowers to rejoin",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The rest before I could translate to its proper coin",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gratitude for her grace. And I paid nothing then,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As I pay nothing now with the dipping of my pen",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For her brother’s music when he drummed the tambourine",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And stamped his feet, which made the workmen passing grin,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While his mouth-organ changed to a rascally Bacchanal dance",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Over the hills and far away.” This and his glance",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Outlasted all the fair, farmer and auctioneer,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cheap-jack, balloon-man, drover with crooked stick, and steer,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pig, turkey, goose, and duck, Christmas Corpses to be.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not even the kneeling ox had eyes like the Romany.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That night he peopled for me the hollow wooded land,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More dark and wild than stormiest heavens, that I searched and scanned",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like a ghost new-arrived. The gradations of the dark",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were like an underworld of death, but for the spark",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the Gypsy boy’s black eyes as he played and stamped his tune,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Over the hills and far away,” and a crescent moon.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}