{
 "id": "james-weldon-johnson/before-a-painting",
 "title": "Before a Painting",
 "poet": "James Weldon Johnson",
 "poet_slug": "james-weldon-johnson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Fifty Years & Other Poems",
 "book_slug": "fifty-years-and-other-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 16,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1917,
  "venue": "Fifty Years & Other Poems (1917)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/fiftyyearsother00johnrich",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17884"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/james-weldon-johnson_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.google.com/books/edition/How_the_National_Association_for_the_Adv/AAs-AQAAMAAJ",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17884",
   "https://archive.org/details/fiftyyearsother00johnrich",
   "https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/johnson/johnson.html",
   "https://archive.org/details/godstrombonessev00johnso"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 14,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 46,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I knew not who had wrought with skill so fine",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What I beheld; nor by what laws of art",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "He had created life and love and heart",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "On canvas, from mere color, curve and line.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Silent I stood and made no move or sign;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not with the crowd, but reverently apart;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor felt the power my rooted limbs to start,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But mutely gazed upon that face divine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And over me the sense of beauty fell,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As music over a raptured listener to",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The deep-voiced organ breathing out a hymn;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Or as on one who kneels, his beads to tell,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There falls the aureate glory filtered through",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The windows in some old cathedral dim.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ]
 ]
}