{
 "id": "jean-toomer/song-of-the-son",
 "title": "Song of the Son",
 "poet": "Jean Toomer",
 "poet_slug": "jean-toomer",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Cane",
 "book_slug": "cane",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 5,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1923,
  "venue": "Cane (1923)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3655399"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/jean-toomer_cane",
  "file": "song-of-the-son.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60093",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001417524"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 23,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Pour O pour that parting soul in song,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O pour it in the sawdust glow of night,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into the velvet pine-smoke air to-night,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And let the valley carry it along.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And let the valley carry it along.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So scant of grass, so profligate of pines,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now just before an epoch’s sun declines",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy son, in time, I have returned to thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy son, I have in time returned to thee.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "In time, for though the sun is setting on",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A song-lit race of slaves, it has not set;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though late, O soil, it is not too late yet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To catch thy plaintive soul, leaving, soon gone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leaving, to catch thy plaintive soul soon gone.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O Negro slaves, dark purple ripened plums,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Squeezed, and bursting in the pine-wood air,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Passing, before they stripped the old tree bare",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One plum was saved for me, one seed becomes",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "An everlasting song, a singing tree,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Caroling softly souls of slavery,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What they were, and what they are to me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Caroling softly souls of slavery.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}