{
 "id": "edward-thomas/the-new-year",
 "title": "The New Year",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Last Poems",
 "book_slug": "last-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 60,
 "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": 20,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "He was the one man I met up in the woods",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That stormy New Year’s morning; and at first sight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fifty yards off, I could not tell how much",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the strange tripod was a man. His body,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bowed horizontal, was supported equally",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By legs at one end, by a rake at the other:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thus he rested, far less like a man than",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His wheel-barrow in profile was like a pig.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But when I saw it was an old man bent,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At the same moment came into my mind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The games at which boys bend thus, High-Cockalorum,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or Fly-the-garter, and Leap-frog. At the sound",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of footsteps he began to straighten himself;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His head rolled under his cape like a tortoise’s;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He took an unlit pipe out of his mouth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Politely ere I wished him “A Happy New Year,”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And with his head cast upward sideways muttered⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So far as I could hear through the trees’ roar⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Happy New Year, and may it come fastish, too,”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While I strode by and he turned to raking leaves.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}