{
 "id": "c-s-lewis/sonnet",
 "title": "Sonnet",
 "ordinal": "XX",
 "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": 18,
 "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-20.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": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 47,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "The stars come out; the fragrant shadows fall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "About a dreaming garden still and sweet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I hear the unseen bats above me bleat",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Among the ghostly moths their hunting call,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And twinkling glow-worms all about me crawl.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now for a chamber dim, a pillow meet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For slumbers deep as death, a faultless sheet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cool, white and smooth. So may I reach the hall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With poppies strewn where sleep that is so dear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With magic sponge can wipe away an hour",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or twelve and make them naught. Why not a year,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why could a man not loiter in that bower",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Until a thousand painless cycles wore,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then⁠—what if it held him evermore?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}