{
 "id": "walt-whitman/poets-to-come",
 "title": "Poets to Come",
 "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": 22,
 "container": "Inscriptions",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1860,
  "venue": "Leaves of Grass (Boston, 1860–61)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1860–61 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/leavesofgrass00whituoft"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "inscriptions.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"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 9,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 111,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Arouse! for you must justify me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leaving it to you to prove and define it,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Expecting the main things from you.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}