{
 "id": "w-b-yeats/the-fisherman-2",
 "title": "The Fisherman",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "W. B. Yeats",
 "poet_slug": "w-b-yeats",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Wild Swans at Coole",
 "book_slug": "the-wild-swans-at-coole",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 6,
 "container": "The Wild Swans at Coole",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1917,
  "venue": "The Wild Swans at Coole (1917)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/wildswansatcoole00yeatrich"
  ]
 },
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  "repo": "standardebooks/w-b-yeats_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
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   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49609",
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   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49609",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32233",
   "https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.92252",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001776372",
   "https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Dublin_University_Review/fE8wAQAAMAAJ",
   "https://www.google.ie/books/edition/The_Dublin_University_Review/TWUEAAAAQAAJ",
   "https://www.google.ie/books/edition/The_Dublin_University_Review/TFAwAQAAMAAJ",
   "https://www.google.ie/books/edition/The_Irish_Monthly/EMoaAAAAYAAJ",
   "https://archive.org/details/gop-1889",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsandballads00unkngoog",
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   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksin02yeatuoft",
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   "https://books.google.com/books?id=jDI3AAAAIAAJ",
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  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-21"
 },
 "stats": {
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  "n_stanzas": 2,
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  "longest_line_chars": 34,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Although I can see him still",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The freckled man who goes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To a grey place on a hill",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In grey Connemara clothes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At dawn to cast his flies,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It’s long since I began",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To call up to the eyes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This wise and simple man.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All day I’d looked in the face",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What I had hoped ’twould be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To write for my own race",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the reality;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The living men that I hate,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The dead man that I loved,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The craven man in his seat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The insolent unreproved,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And no knave brought to book",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who has won a drunken cheer,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The witty man and his joke",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Aimed at the commonest ear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The clever man who cries",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The catch-cries of the clown,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The beating down of the wise",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And great Art beaten down.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Maybe a twelvemonth since",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Suddenly I began,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In scorn of this audience",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Imagining a man,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And his sun-freckled face,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And grey Connemara cloth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Climbing up to a place",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where stone is dark under froth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the down turn of his wrist",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When the flies drop in the stream;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A man who does not exist,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A man who is but a dream;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And cried, “Before I am old",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall have written him one",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Poem maybe as cold",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And passionate as the dawn.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}