{
 "id": "robert-frost/the-onset",
 "title": "The Onset",
 "poet": "Robert Frost",
 "poet_slug": "robert-frost",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Hampshire",
 "book_slug": "new-hampshire",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 26,
 "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": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 52,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Always the same, when on a fated night",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At last the gathered snow lets down as white",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As may be in dark woods, and with a song",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It shall not make again all winter long",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I almost stumble looking up and round,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As one who overtaken by the end",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gives up his errand, and lets death descend",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon him where he is, with nothing done",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To evil, no important triumph won,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More than if life had never been begun.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yet all the precedent is on my side:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I know that winter death has never tried",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The earth but it has failed: the snow may heap",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In long storms an undrifted four feet deep",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As measured against maple, birch and oak,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It cannot check the peeper’s silver croak;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I shall see the snow all go down hill",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In water of a slender April rill",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That flashes tail through last year’s withered brake",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And dead weeds, like a disappearing snake.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nothing will be left white but here a birch,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And there a clump of houses with a church.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}