{
 "id": "c-s-lewis/oxford",
 "title": "Oxford",
 "ordinal": "XXX",
 "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": 26,
 "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-30.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": 48,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "It is well that there are palaces of peace",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And discipline and dreaming and desire,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lest we forget our heritage and cease",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Spirit’s work⁠—to hunger and aspire:",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lest we forget that we were born divine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now tangled in red battle’s animal net,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Murder the work and lust the anodyne,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pains of the beast ’gainst bestial solace set.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But this shall never be: to us remains",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One city that has nothing of the beast,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That was not built for gross, material gains,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sharp, wolfish power or empire’s glutted feast.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "We are not wholly brute. To us remains",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A clean, sweet city lulled by ancient streams,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A place of visions and of loosening chains,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A refuge of the elect, a tower of dreams.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "She was not builded out of common stone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But out of all men’s yearning and all prayer",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That she might live, eternally our own,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Spirit’s stronghold⁠—barred against despair.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}