{
 "id": "edward-thomas/the-unknown-bird",
 "title": "The Unknown Bird",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Last Poems",
 "book_slug": "last-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 28,
 "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": 33,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 53,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Three lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be heard",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If others sang; but others never sang",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the great beech-wood all that May and June.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No one saw him: I alone could hear him",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though many listened. Was it but four years",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ago? or five? He never came again.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Oftenest when I heard him I was alone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor could I ever make another hear.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "La-la-la! he called, seeming far-off⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As if the bird or I were in a dream.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet that he travelled through the trees and sometimes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Neared me, was plain, though somehow distant still",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He sounded. All the proof is⁠—I told men",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What I had heard.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I never knew a voice,",
    "indent": 0,
    "align": "right"
   },
   {
    "text": "Man, beast, or bird, better than this. I told",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The naturalists; but neither had they heard",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Anything like the notes that did so haunt me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I had them clear by heart and have them still.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Four years, or five, have made no difference. Then",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As now that La-la-la! was bodiless sweet:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sad more than joyful it was, if I must say",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That it was one or other, but if sad",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Twas sad only with joy too, too far off",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For me to taste it. But I cannot tell",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If truly never anything but fair",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The days were when he sang, as now they seem.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This surely I know, that I who listened then,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Happy sometimes, sometimes suffering",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A heavy body and a heavy heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now straightway, if I think of it, become",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Light as that bird wandering beyond my shore.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}