{
 "id": "frances-ellen-watkins-harper/i-thirst",
 "title": "“I Thirst”",
 "poet": "Frances Ellen Watkins Harper",
 "poet_slug": "frances-ellen-watkins-harper",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Sketches of Southern Life",
 "book_slug": "sketches-of-southern-life",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 7,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1872,
  "venue": "Sketches of Southern Life (1872)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/frances-ellen-watkins-harper_sketches-of-southern-life-1872",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69249"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/frances-ellen-watkins-harper_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/frances-ew-harper-poems-on-miscellaneous-subjects-1857",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsonmiscellan00harp",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/frances-ew-harper-poems-1871",
   "https://archive.org/details/poems01harp",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69249",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007491600",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69248",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100774124",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/frances-ew-harper-poems-full-text-1895",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100488369",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/frances-ew-harper-idylls-of-the-bible-1901",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100319488",
   "https://archive.org/details/historyofafrican00payn",
   "https://archive.org/details/WeeklyAngloAfricanI",
   "https://archive.org/details/sim_liberator_1858-05-14_28_20",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000500702",
   "https://archive.org/details/undergroundrailr00stil",
   "https://archive.org/details/frances-ellen-watkins-harper_sketches-of-southern-life-1872",
   "https://archive.org/details/25th-annual-report-of-the-board-of-managers-of-the-home-etc",
   "https://archive.org/details/frances-ellen-watkins-harper_light-beyond-the-darkness",
   "https://archive.org/details/ame-church-review-1900-04"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 6,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 45,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I thirst, but earth cannot allay",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The fever coursing through my veins.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The healing stream is far away⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It flows through Salem’s lovely plains.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The murmurs of its crystal flow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Break ever o’er this world of strife;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "My heart is weary, let me go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To bathe it in the stream of life;",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For many worn and weary hearts",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Have bathed in this pure healing stream,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And felt their griefs and cares depart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "E’en like some sad forgotten dream.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Say not, within thy weary heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who shall ascend above,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To bring unto thy fever’d lips",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The fount of joy and love.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Nor do thou seek to vainly delve",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where death’s pale angels tread,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To hear the murmur of its flow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Around the silent dead.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Within, in thee is one living fount,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fed from the springs above;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "There quench thy thirst till thou shalt bathe",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In God’s own sea of love.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ],
 "notes": [
  {
   "id": "speaker-labels-missing",
   "kind": "defect",
   "raised": "2026-08-12",
   "what": "The printed poem sets speaker labels — First Voice, Second Voice — over its stanzas. They are not in `parts` and not in the verse.",
   "consequence": "Left released: the verse itself is complete and in order, and what is missing is apparatus rather than structure of the kind that reorganises the poem. Recorded so the page is not read as the whole of the printing.",
   "to_settle": "Add the labels as parts, from the witness.",
   "checked_against": [
    "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69249"
   ]
  }
 ]
}