{
 "id": "james-weldon-johnson/girl-of-fifteen",
 "title": "Girl of Fifteen",
 "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": 18,
 "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": 16,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 50,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Girl of fifteen,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see you each morning from my window",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As you pass on your way to school.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I do more than see, I watch you.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I furtively draw the curtain aside.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And my heart leaps through my eyes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And follows you down the street;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leaving me behind, half-hid",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And wholly ashamed.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What holds me back,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Half-hid behind the curtains and wholly ashamed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But my forty years beyond your fifteen?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Girl of fifteen, as you pass",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There passes, too, a lightning flash of time",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In which you lift those forty summers off my head,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And take those forty winters out of my heart.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}