{
 "id": "c-s-lewis/the-ocean-strand",
 "title": "The Ocean Strand",
 "ordinal": "XVII",
 "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": 15,
 "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-17.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": 30,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 49,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "O leave the labouring roadways of the town,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The shifting faces and the changeful hue",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of markets, and broad echoing streets that drown",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The heart’s own silent music. Though they too",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sing in their proper rhythm, and still delight",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The friendly ear that loves warm human kind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet it is good to leave them all behind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now when from lily dawn to purple night",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Summer is queen,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Summer is queen in all the happy land.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Far, far away among the valleys green",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let us go forth and wander hand in hand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beyond those solemn hills that we have seen",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So often welcome home the falling sun",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into their cloudy peaks when day was done⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beyond them till we find the ocean strand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And hear the great waves run,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With the waste song whose melodies I’d follow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And weary not for many a summer day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Born of the vaulted breakers arching hollow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before they flash and scatter into spray.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On, if we should be weary of their play",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then I would lead you further into land",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where, with their ragged walls, the stately rocks",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shut in smooth courts and paved with quiet sand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To silence dedicate. The sea-god’s flocks",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Have rested here, and mortal eyes have seen",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By great adventure at the dead of noon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A lonely nereid drowsing half a-swoon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Buried beneath her dark and dripping locks.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}