{
 "id": "matthew-arnold/the-hayswater-boat",
 "title": "The Hayswater Boat",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Matthew Arnold",
 "poet_slug": "matthew-arnold",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems",
 "book_slug": "the-strayed-reveller",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 8,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1849,
  "venue": "The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/strayedrevellero00arno"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/matthew-arnold_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27739",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofmatthewar00arnouoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/poeticalworksofm00arn",
   "https://archive.org/details/inmemoriamawrea00marsgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 40,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 43,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "A region desolate and wild,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Black, chafing water: and afloat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And lonely as a truant child",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a waste wood, a single boat:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No mast, no sails are set thereon;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It moves, but never moveth on:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And welters like a human thing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Amid the wild waves weltering.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Behind, a buried vale doth sleep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Far down the torrent cleaves its way:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In front the dumb rock rises steep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A fretted wall of blue and grey;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of shooting cliff and crumbled stone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With many a wild weed overgrown:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All else, black water: and afloat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One rood from shore, that single boat.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Last night the wind was up and strong;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The grey-streak’d waters labour still:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The strong blast brought a pygmy throng",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From that mild hollow in the hill;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From those twin brooks, that beachèd strand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So featly strewn with drifted sand;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From those weird domes of mounded green",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That spot the solitary scene.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "This boat they found against the shore:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The glossy rushes nodded by.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One rood from land they push’d, no more;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then rested, listening silently.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The loud rains lash’d the mountain’s crown,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The grating shingle straggled down:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All night they sate; then stole away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And left it rocking in the bay.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Last night?⁠—I look’d, the sky was clear.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The boat was old, a batter’d boat.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In sooth, it seems a hundred year",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since that strange crew did ride afloat.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The boat hath drifted in the bay⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The oars have moulder’d as they lay⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The rudder swings⁠—yet none doth steer.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What living hand hath brought it here?",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}