{
 "id": "w-b-yeats/the-meditation-of-the-old-fisherman",
 "title": "The Meditation of the Old Fisherman",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "W. B. Yeats",
 "poet_slug": "w-b-yeats",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Crossways",
 "book_slug": "crossways",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": "Crossways",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1888,
  "venue": "Crossways (1888)",
  "note": "Year from the 1922 Unwin Poems copyright page, which states these lyrics were published with The Wanderings of Oisin in 1888. That 1888 volume is not on disk. Membership is the Crossways section of the 1895 Unwin Poems, the first book to collect them under that title. An earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poemswilliambutl00yeatrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsyeatrich"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
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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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  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-21"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 12,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 70,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "You waves, though you dance by my feet like children at play,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though you glow and you glance, though you purr and you dart;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the Junes that were warmer than these are, the waves were more gay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The herring are not in the tides as they were of old;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My sorrow! for many a creak gave the creel in the cart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That carried the take to Sligo town to be sold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And ah, you proud maiden, you are not so fair when his oar",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is heard on the water, as they were, the proud and apart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who paced in the eve by the nets on the pebbly shore,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}