{
 "id": "edward-thomas/words",
 "title": "Words",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 63,
 "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": 59,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 30,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Out of us all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That make rhymes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Will you choose",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sometimes⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As the winds use",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A crack in a wall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or a drain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their joy or their pain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To whistle through⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Choose me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You English words?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I know you:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You are light as dreams,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tough as oak,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Precious as gold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As poppies and corn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or an old cloak:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sweet as our birds",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the ear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As the burnet rose",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "In the heat",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of Midsummer:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strange as the races",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of dead and unborn:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strange and sweet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Equally,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And familiar,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the eye,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As the dearest faces",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That a man knows,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And as lost homes are:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But though older far",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than oldest yew⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As our hills are, old⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Worn new",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Again and again:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Young as our streams",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "After rain:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And as dear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As the earth which you prove",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That we love.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Make me content",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With some sweetness",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From Wales",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose nightingales",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Have no wings⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From Wiltshire and Kent",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Herefordshire,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the villages there⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the names, and the things",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No less.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let me sometimes dance",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or climb",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or stand perchance",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In ecstasy,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fixed and free",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a rhyme,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As poets do.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}