{
 "id": "robert-frost/for-once-then-something",
 "title": "For Once, Then, Something",
 "poet": "Robert Frost",
 "poet_slug": "robert-frost",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Hampshire",
 "book_slug": "new-hampshire",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 24,
 "container": "Grace Notes",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1923,
  "venue": "New Hampshire (1923)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/newhampshirepoem00fros_0",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58611",
   "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7008086"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
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  "repo": "standardebooks/robert-frost_new-hampshire",
  "file": "new-hampshire.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58611",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000433611"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 15,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
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  "longest_line_chars": 53,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Always wrong to the light, so never seeing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Deeper down in the well than where the water",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gives me back in a shining surface picture",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Me myself in the summer heaven godlike",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Something more of the depths⁠—and then I lost it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Water came to rebuke the too clear water.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}