{
 "id": "walt-whitman/on-the-beach-at-night",
 "title": "On the Beach at Night",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 107,
 "container": "Sea-Drift",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1871,
  "venue": "Leaves of Grass (Washington, 1871)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1871 scan. The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesofgrawhit"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "sea-drift.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12",
  "corrections": [
   {
    "line": 1,
    "field": "indent",
    "was": 0,
    "now": 5,
    "why": "Indentation absent from the source markup and measured from the scan: this line starts 15.2 character advances (~7.6 em) right of its own page's base margin, where the verse sets flush. Converted at 3.0 advances per indent level (tools/defects.py indent).",
    "checked_against": "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog",
    "date": "2026-08-20"
   }
  ]
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 32,
  "n_stanzas": 6,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 87,
  "max_indent": 5
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "On the beach at night,",
    "indent": 5
   },
   {
    "text": "Stands a child with her father,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Watching the east, the autumn sky.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Up through the darkness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And nigh at hand, only a very little above,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Those burial clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Watching, silently weeps.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Weep not, child,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Weep not, my darling,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With these kisses let me remove your tears,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Something there is,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Something there is more immortal even than the stars,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}