{
 "id": "robert-frost/our-singing-strength",
 "title": "Our Singing Strength",
 "poet": "Robert Frost",
 "poet_slug": "robert-frost",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Hampshire",
 "book_slug": "new-hampshire",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 42,
 "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": 53,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 55,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "It snowed in spring on earth so dry and warm",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The flakes could find no landing place to form.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hordes spent themselves to make it wet and cold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And still they failed of any lasting hold.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They made no white impression on the black.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They disappeared as if earth sent them back.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not till from separate flakes they changed at night",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To almost strips and tapes of ragged white",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Did grass and garden ground confess it snowed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all go back to winter but the road.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Next day the scene was piled and puffed and dead.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The grass lay flattened under one great tread.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Borne down until the end almost took root,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The rangey bough anticipated fruit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With snowballs cupped in every opening bud.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The road alone maintained itself in mud,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whatever its secret was of greater heat",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From inward fires or brush of passing feet.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "In spring more mortal singers than belong",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To any one place cover us with song.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thrush, bluebird, blackbird, sparrow, and robin throng;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some to go further north to Hudson’s Bay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some that have come too far north back away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Really a very few to build and stay.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now was seen how these liked belated snow.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The fields had nowhere left for them to go;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They’d soon exhausted all there was in flying;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The trees they’d had enough of with once trying",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And setting off their heavy powder load.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They could find nothing open but the road.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So there they let their lives be narrowed in",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By thousands the bad weather made akin.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The road became a channel running flocks",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of glossy birds like ripples over rocks.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I drove them under foot in bits of flight",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That kept the ground, almost disputing right",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of way with me from apathy of wing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A talking twitter all they had to sing.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A few I must have driven to despair",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Made quick asides, but having done in air",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A whir among white branches great and small",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As in some too much carven marble hall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where one false wing beat would have brought down all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Came tamely back in front of me, the Drover,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To suffer the same driven nightmare over.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One such storm in a lifetime couldn’t teach them",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That back behind pursuit it couldn’t reach them;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "None flew behind me to be left alone.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Well, something for a snowstorm to have shown",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The country’s singing strength thus brought together,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That though repressed and moody with the weather",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was none the less there ready to be freed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And sing the wildflowers up from root and seed.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}