{
 "id": "james-mcintyre/joined-his-church",
 "title": "Joined His Church",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "James McIntyre",
 "poet_slug": "james-mcintyre",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems of James McIntyre",
 "book_slug": "poems-of-james-mcintyre",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 92,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1889,
  "venue": "Poems of James McIntyre (1889)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/cihm_11791"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://archive.org/details/cihm_09542",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36068",
   "https://archive.org/details/cihm_11791"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 16,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 39,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "They tell us, May, that love is blind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But dear, there’s something on my mind;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And since we now are engaged,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I hope you will not be enraged.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Can you, dear May, now bear the news",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the poor husband vou would choose;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I fear to tell you, but I must,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I am a somnambulist.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Said she, “Dear Dick, I will not lurch,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But stick to you if that’s your church;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though I own, as a tender maid",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of your belief I was afraid.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But now the name I do not heed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And will adopt it as my creed;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though, alas, she soon is weeping",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To see her husband walking sleeping.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}