{
 "id": "c-s-lewis/apology",
 "title": "Apology",
 "ordinal": "VII",
 "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": 7,
 "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-7.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": 20,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 54,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "If men should ask, Despoina, why I tell",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of nothing glad nor noble in my verse",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To lighten hearts beneath this present curse",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And build a heaven of dreams in real hell,",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Go you to them and speak among them thus:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“There were no greater grief than to recall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Down in the rotting grave where the lithe worms crawl,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Green fields above that smiled so sweet to us.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Is it good to tell old tales of Troynovant",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or praises of dead heroes, tried and sage,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or sing the queens of unforgotten age,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Brynhild and Maeve and virgin Bradamant?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "How should I sing of them? Can it be good",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To think of glory now, when all is done,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all our labour underneath the sun",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Has brought us this⁠—and not the thing we would?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "All these were rosy visions of the night,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The loveliness and wisdom feigned of old.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But now we wake. The East is pale and cold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No hope is in the dawn, and no delight.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}