{
 "id": "w-b-yeats/the-people",
 "title": "The People",
 "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": 10,
 "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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   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49609",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32233",
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   "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",
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  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-21"
 },
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  [
   {
    "text": "“What have I earned for all that work,” I said,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“For all that I have done at my own charge?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The daily spite of this unmannerly town,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where who has served the most is most defamed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The reputation of his lifetime lost",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Between the night and morning. I might have lived,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And you know well how great the longing has been,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where every day my footfall should have lit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the green shadow of Ferrara wall;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or climbed among the images of the past⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The unperturbed and courtly images⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Evening and morning, the steep street of Urbino",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To where the duchess and her people talked",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The stately midnight through until they stood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In their great window looking at the dawn;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I might have had no friend that could not mix",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Courtesy and passion into one like those",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That saw the wicks grow yellow in the dawn;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I might have used the one substantial right",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My trade allows: chosen my company,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And chosen what scenery had pleased me best.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thereon my phoenix answered in reproof,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“The drunkards, pilferers of public funds,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All the dishonest crowd I had driven away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When my luck changed and they dared meet my face,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Crawled from obscurity, and set upon me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Those I had served and some that I had fed;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet never have I, now nor any time,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Complained of the people.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "All I could reply",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was: “You, that have not lived in thought but deed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can have the purity of a natural force,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I, whose virtues are the definitions",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the analytic mind, can neither close",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The eye of the mind nor keep my tongue from speech.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And yet, because my heart leaped at her words,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was abashed, and now they come to mind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "After nine years, I sink my head abashed.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}