{
 "id": "robert-frost/not-to-keep",
 "title": "Not to Keep",
 "poet": "Robert Frost",
 "poet_slug": "robert-frost",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Hampshire",
 "book_slug": "new-hampshire",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 30,
 "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": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "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": 23,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "They sent him back to her. The letter came",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Saying⁠ ⁠… And she could have him. And before",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She could be sure there was no hidden ill",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Under the formal writing, he was in her sight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Living. They gave him back to her alive⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How else? They are not known to send the dead⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And not disfigured visibly. His face?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His hands? She had to look, to ask,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“What is it, dear?” And she had given all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And still she had all⁠—they had⁠—they the lucky!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wasn’t she glad now? Everything seemed won,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all the rest for them permissible ease.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She had to ask, “What was it, dear?”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Enough,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet not enough. A bullet through and through,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "High in the breast. Nothing but what good care",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And medicine and rest, and you a week,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can cure me of to go again.” The same",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grim giving to do over for them both.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She dared no more than ask him with her eyes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How was it with him for a second trial.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And with his eyes he asked her not to ask.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They had given him back to her, but not to keep.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}