{
 "id": "james-weldon-johnson/the-suicide",
 "title": "The Suicide",
 "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": 19,
 "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": 22,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 59,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "For fifty years,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cruel, insatiable Old World,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You have punched me over the heart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till you made me cough blood.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The few paltry things I gathered",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You snatched out of my hands.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You have knocked the cup from my thirsty lips.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You have laughed at my hunger of body and soul.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "You look at me now and think,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“He is still strong,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There ought to be twenty more years of good punching there.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At the end of that time he will be old and broken,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not able to strike back,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But cringing and crying for leave",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To live a little longer.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Those twenty, pitiful, extra years",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would please you more than the fifty past,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would they not, Old World?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Well, I hold them up before your greedy eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And snatch them away as I laugh in your face,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ha! Ha!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bang⁠—!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}