{
 "id": "c-s-lewis/alexandrines",
 "title": "Alexandrines",
 "ordinal": "XXIII",
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "C. S. Lewis",
 "poet_slug": "c-s-lewis",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Spirits in Bondage",
 "book_slug": "spirits-in-bondage",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 21,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1919,
  "venue": "Spirits in Bondage (1919)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/spiritsinbondage00lewirich",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2003"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/c-s-lewis_poetry",
  "file": "spirits-in-bondage-chapter-23.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2003",
   "https://archive.org/details/spiritsinbondage00lewirich",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/101865124"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 13,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 60,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "There is a house that most of all on earth I hate.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though I have passed through many sorrows and have been",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In bloody fields, sad seas, and countries desolate,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet most I fear that empty house where the grasses green",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grow in the silent court the gaping flags between,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And down the moss-grown paths and terrace no man treads",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the old, old weeds rise deep on the waste garden beds.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like eyes of one long dead the empty windows stare",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I fear to cross the garden, I fear to linger there,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For in that house I know a little, silent room",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where Someone’s always waiting, waiting in the gloom",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To draw me with an evil eye, and hold me fast⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet thither doom will drive me and He will win at last.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}