{
 "id": "edward-thomas/what-will-they-do",
 "title": "What Will They Do?",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Last Poems",
 "book_slug": "last-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 14,
 "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": 12,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "What will they do when I am gone? It is plain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That they will do without me as the rain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can do without the flowers and the grass",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That profit by it and must perish without.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I have but seen them in the loud street pass;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I was naught to them. I turned about",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To see them disappearing carelessly.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But what if I in them as they in me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nourished what has great value and no price?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Almost I thought that rain thirsts for a draught",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which only in the blossom’s chalice lies,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Until that one turned back and lightly laughed.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}