{
 "id": "edward-thomas/the-sign-post",
 "title": "The Sign-Post",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 2,
 "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": 30,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "The dim sea glints chill. The white sun is shy.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the skeleton weeds and the never-dry,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rough, long grasses keep white with frost",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At the hilltop by the finger-post;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The smoke of the traveller’s-joy is puffed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Over hawthorn berry and hazel tuft.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I read the sign. Which way shall I go?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A voice says: You would not have doubted so",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At twenty. Another voice gentle with scorn",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Says: At twenty you wished you had never been born.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "One hazel lost a leaf of gold",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From a tuft at the tip, when the first voice told",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The other he wished to know what ’twould be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To be sixty by this same post. “You shall see,”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He laughed⁠—and I had to join his laughter⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“You shall see; but either before or after,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whatever happens, it must befall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A mouthful of earth to remedy all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Regrets and wishes shall freely be given;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And if there be a flaw in that heaven",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Twill be freedom to wish, and your wish may be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To be here or anywhere talking to me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No matter what the weather, on earth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At any age between death and birth⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To see what day or night can be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sun and the frost, the land and the sea,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With a poor man of any sort, down to a king,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Standing upright out in the air",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wondering where he shall journey, O where?”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}