{
 "id": "robert-frost/the-census-taker",
 "title": "The Census-Taker",
 "poet": "Robert Frost",
 "poet_slug": "robert-frost",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Hampshire",
 "book_slug": "new-hampshire",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 3,
 "container": "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": 64,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
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  [
   {
    "text": "I came an errand one cloud-blowing evening",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To a slab-built, black-paper-covered house",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of one room and one window and one door,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The only dwelling in a waste cut over",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A hundred square miles round it in the mountains:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that not dwelt in now by men or women",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(It never had been dwelt in, though, by women,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So what is this I make a sorrow of?)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I came as census-taker to the waste",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To count the people in it and found none,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "None in the hundred miles, none in the house,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where I came last with some hope, but not much",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "After hours’ overlooking from the cliffs",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "An emptiness flayed to the very stone.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I found no people that dared show themselves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "None not in hiding from the outward eye.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The time was autumn, but how anyone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Could tell the time of year when every tree",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That could have dropped a leaf was down itself",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And nothing but the stump of it was left",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now bringing out its rings in sugar of pitch;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And every tree up stood a rotting trunk",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Without a single leaf to spend on autumn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or branch to whistle after what was spent.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Perhaps the wind the more without the help",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of breathing trees said something of the time",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of year or day the way it swung a door",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Forever off the latch, as if rude men",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Passed in and slammed it shut each one behind him",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For the next one to open for himself.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I counted nine I had no right to count",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(But this was dreamy unofficial counting)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before I made the tenth across the threshold.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where was my supper? Where was anyone’s?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No lamp was lit. Nothing was on the table.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The stove was cold⁠—the stove was off the chimney⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And down by one side where it lacked a leg.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The people that had loudly passed the door",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were people to the ear but not the eye.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They were not on the table with their elbows.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They were not sleeping in the shelves of bunks.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I saw no men there and no bones of men there.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I armed myself against such bones as might be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With the pitch-blackened stub of an axe-handle",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I picked up off the straw-dust covered floor.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not bones, but the ill-fitted window rattled.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The door was still because I held it shut",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While I thought what to do that could be done⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "About the house⁠—about the people not there.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This house in one year fallen to decay",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Filled me with no less sorrow than the houses",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fallen to ruin in ten thousand years",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where Asia wedges Africa from Europe.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nothing was left to do that I could see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unless to find that there was no one there",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And declare to the cliffs too far for echo",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“The place is desert and let whoso lurks",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In silence, if in this he is aggrieved,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Break silence now or be forever silent.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let him say why it should not be declared so.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The melancholy of having to count souls",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where they grow fewer and fewer every year",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is extreme where they shrink to none at all.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It must be I want life to go on living.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}