{
 "id": "elizabeth-barrett-browning/xviii",
 "title": "XVIII",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Elizabeth Barrett Browning",
 "poet_slug": "elizabeth-barrett-browning",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Sonnets from the Portuguese",
 "book_slug": "sonnets-from-the-portuguese",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 18,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1850,
  "venue": "Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://github.com/standardebooks/elizabeth-barrett-browning_sonnets-from-the-portuguese",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2002"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/elizabeth-barrett-browning_sonnets-from-the-portuguese",
  "file": "sonnets-from-the-portuguese.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2002",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100114123"
  ],
  "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": 52,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I never gave a lock of hair away",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I ring out to the full brown length, and say:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Take it.” My day of youth went yesterday;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My hair no longer bounds to my foot’s glee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle-tree,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As girls do, any more: it only may",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now shade on two pale cheeks, the mark of tears,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through sorrow’s trick. I thought the funeral shears",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would take this first, but Love is justified:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Take it thou⁠—finding pure, from all those years,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The kiss my mother left here when she died.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}