{
 "id": "walt-whitman/to-a-certain-civilian",
 "title": "To a Certain Civilian",
 "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": 179,
 "container": "Drum-Taps",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1865,
  "venue": "Drum-Taps (New York, 1865)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1865 Drum-Taps 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/waltwhitmansdrum00whit"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "drum-taps.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": 10,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 80,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Did you seek the civilian’s peaceful and languishing rhymes?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understand⁠—nor am I now;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(I have been born of the same as the war was born,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The drum-corps’ rattle is ever to me sweet music, I love well the martial dirge,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With slow wail and convulsive throb leading the officer’s funeral;)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What to such as you anyhow such a poet as I? therefore leave my works,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And go lull yourself with what you can understand, and with piano-tunes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}