{
 "id": "walt-whitman/what-best-i-see-in-thee",
 "title": "What Best I See in Thee",
 "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": 273,
 "container": "From Noon to Starry Night",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1881,
  "venue": "Leaves of Grass (Boston, 1881–82)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1881–82 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/leavesofgrasswhi00whitrich"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "from-noon-to-starry-night.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 14.1 character advances (~7.1 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": 11,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 82,
  "max_indent": 5
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "What best I see in thee,",
    "indent": 5
   },
   {
    "text": "Is not that where thou mov’st down history’s great highways,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ever undimm’d by time shoots warlike victory’s dazzle,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or that thou sat’st where Washington sat, ruling the land in peace,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or thou the man whom feudal Europe fêted, venerable Asia swarm’d upon,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who walk’d with kings with even pace the round world’s promenade;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ohio’s, Indiana’s millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the front,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round world’s promenade,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were all so justified.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}