{
 "id": "georgia-douglas-johnson/laocoon",
 "title": "Laocoön",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Georgia Douglas Johnson",
 "poet_slug": "georgia-douglas-johnson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Bronze: A Book of Verses",
 "book_slug": "bronze",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 11,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1922,
  "venue": "Bronze: A Book of Verses (1922)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/bronzebookofvers00john"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/georgia-douglas-johnson_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/georgia-douglas-johnson-the-heart-of-a-woman-full-text-1918",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/103153234",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/georgia-douglas-johnson-bronze-full-text-1922",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000781515",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/poems-by-georgia-douglas-johnson-in-the-new-negro-1925",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000340210",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/georgia-douglas-johnson-an-autumn-love-cycle-full-text-1928",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102777177",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/georgia-douglas-johnson-poems-published-in-the-crisis-1910-1926",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000502434",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/poems-published-in-the-messenger-magazine",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000056822",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000064962"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 37,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "This spirit-choking atmosphere",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With deadly serpent-coil",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Entwines my soaring-upwardness",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And chains me to the soil,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Where’er I seek with eager stride",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To gain yon gleaming height,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "These noisesome fetters coil aloft",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And snare my buoyant flight.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O, why these aspirations bold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These rigours of desire,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "That surge within so ceaselessly",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like living tongues of fire?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And why these glowing forms of hope",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That scintillate and shine,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "If naught of all that burnished dream",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can evermore be mine?",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It cannot be, fate does not mock,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And man’s untoward decree",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall not forever thus confine",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My life’s entirety,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "My every fibre fierce rebels",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Against this servile role,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And all my being broods to break",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This death-grip from my soul!",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}