{
 "id": "c-s-lewis/satan-speaks",
 "title": "Satan Speaks",
 "ordinal": "I",
 "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": null,
 "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-1.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": 14,
  "n_stanzas": 7,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 42,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I am Nature, the Mighty Mother,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am the law: ye have none other.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I am the flower and the dewdrop fresh,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am the lust in your itching flesh.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I am the battle’s filth and strain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am the widow’s empty pain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I am the sea to smother your breath,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am the bomb, the falling death.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I am the fact and the crushing reason",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To thwart your fantasy’s new-born treason.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I am the spider making her net,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am the beast with jaws blood-wet.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I am a wolf that follows the sun",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I will catch him ere day be done.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}