{
 "id": "robert-w-service/the-low-down-white",
 "title": "The Low-Down White",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Robert W. Service",
 "poet_slug": "robert-w-service",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Songs of a Sourdough",
 "book_slug": "songs-of-a-sourdough",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 22,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1907,
  "venue": "Songs of a Sourdough (1907)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/songsofsourdoug00serv"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/robert-w-service_songs-of-a-sourdough",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25546",
   "https://archive.org/details/songsofsourdoug00serv"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 21,
  "n_stanzas": 7,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 82,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "This is the payday up at the mines, when the bearded brutes come down;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There’s money to burn in the streets tonight, so I’ve sent my klooch to town,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With a haggard face and a ribbon of red entwined in her hair of brown.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And I know at the dawn she’ll come reeling home with the bottles, one, two, three;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One for herself to drown her shame, and two big bottles for me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To make me forget the thing I am and the man I used to be.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "To make me forget the brand of the dog, as I crouch in this hideous place;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To make me forget once I kindled the light of love in a lady’s face,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where even the squalid Siwash now holds me a black disgrace.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Oh, I have guarded my secret well! And who would dream as I speak",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a tribal tongue like a rogue unhung, ’mid the ranch-house filth and reek,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I could roll to bed with a Latin phrase, and rise with a verse of Greek?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yet I was a senior prizeman once, and the pride of a college eight;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Called to the bar⁠—my friends were true! but they could not keep me straight;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then came the divorce, and I went abroad and “died” on the River Plate.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But I’m not dead yet; though with half a lung there isn’t time to spare,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I hope that the year will see me out, and, thank God, no one will care⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Save maybe the little slim Siwash girl with the rose of shame in her hair.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "She will come with the dawn, and the dawn is near; I can see its evil glow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like a corpse-light seen through a frosty pane in a night of want and woe;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And yonder she comes, by the bleak bull-pines, swift staggering through the snow.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}