{
 "id": "john-donne/a-funeral-elegy",
 "title": "A Funeral Elegy",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "John Donne",
 "poet_slug": "john-donne",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems, by J. D. with Elegies on the Authors Death",
 "book_slug": "poems-1633",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": "An Anatomy of the World",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1633,
  "venue": "Poems, by J. D. with Elegies on the Authors Death (1633)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/donnepoems"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/john-donne_poetry",
  "file": "an-anatomy-of-the-world.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofjohndonne01donn_1",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemswithelegie00chamgoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemswithelegie01chamgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-19",
  "corrections": [
   {
    "line": 2,
    "field": "indent",
    "was": 0,
    "now": 2,
    "why": "Indentation absent from the source markup and measured from the scan: this line starts 5.5 character advances (~2.8 em) right of its own page's base margin, where the verse sets flush. Converted at 3.0 advances per indent level (tools/defects.py indent).",
    "checked_against": "https://archive.org/details/poemsofjohndonne01donn_1",
    "date": "2026-08-20"
   }
  ]
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 106,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 2
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "’Tis loss to trust a tomb with such a guest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or to confine her in a marble chest.",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Alas! what’s marble, jet, or porphyry,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Prized with the chrysolite of either eye,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or with those pearls and rubies which she was?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Join the two Indies in one tomb, ’tis glass;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And so is all, to her materials,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though every inch were ten Escurials;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet she’s demolish’d; can we keep her then",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In works of hands, or of the wits of men?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can these memorials, rags of paper, give",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Life to that name, by which name they must live?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sickly, alas! short-lived, abortive be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Those carcase verses, whose soul is not she;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And can she, who no longer would be she,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Being such a tabernacle stoop to be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In paper wrapp’d; or when she would not lie",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In such an house, dwell in an elegy?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But ’tis no matter; we may well allow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Verse to live so long as the world will now,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For her death wounded it. The world contains",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Princes for arms, and counsellors for brains,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lawyers for tongues, divines for hearts, and more,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The rich for stomachs, and for backs the poor;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The officers for hands, merchants for feet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By which remote and distant countries meet;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But those fine spirits, which do tune and set",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This organ, are those pieces which beget",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wonder and love; and these were she; and she",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Being spent, the world must needs decrepit be.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For since death will proceed to triumph still,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He can find nothing, after her, to kill,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Except the world itself, so great as she.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thus brave and confident may nature be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Death cannot give her such another blow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because she cannot such another show.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But must we say she’s dead? may ’t not be said,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That as a sunder’d clock is piecemeal laid,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not to be lost, but by the maker’s hand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Repolish’d, without error then to stand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or as the Afric Niger stream enwombs",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Itself into the earth, and after comes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—Having first made a natural bridge, to pass",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For many leagues⁠—far greater than it was,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "May ’t not be said, that her grave shall restore",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her, greater, purer, firmer than before?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Heaven may say this, and joy in ’t, but can we",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who live, and lack her here, this vantage see?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What is ’t to us, alas! if there have been",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "An angel made a throne, or cherubin?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We lose by ’t: and as agèd men are glad",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Being tasteless grown, to joy in joys they had,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So now the sick, starved world must feed upon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This joy, that we had her, who now is gone.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rejoice then, nature, and this world, that you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fearing the last fires hastening to subdue",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your force and vigour, ere it were near gone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wisely bestow’d and laid it all on one;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One, whose clear body was so pure and thin,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because it need disguise no thought within;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Twas but a through-light scarf her mind to enroll,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or exhalation breathed out from her soul;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One whom all men, who durst no more, admired;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And whom, whoe’er had worth enough, desired;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As when a temple’s built, saints emulate",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To which of them it shall be consecrate.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But as, when heaven looks on us with new eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Those new stars every artist exercise;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What place they should assign to them they doubt,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Argue, and agree not, till those stars go out;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So the world studied whose this piece should be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till she can be nobody’s else, nor she;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But like a lamp of balsamum, desired",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rather to adorn than last, she soon expired.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Clothed in her virgin white integrity",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—For marriage, though it doth not stain, doth dye⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To ’scape th’ infirmities which wait upon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Woman, she went away before she was one;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the world’s busy noise to overcome,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Took so much death as served for opium;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For though she could not, nor could choose to die,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She hath yielded to too long an ecstasy.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He which, not knowing her sad history,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Should come to read the book of destiny,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How fair, and chaste, humble and high she’d been,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Much promised, much perform’d, at not fifteen,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And measuring future things by things before,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Should turn the leaf to read, and read no more,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would think that either destiny mistook,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or that some leaves were torn out of the book.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But ’tis not so; fate did but usher her",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To years of reason’s use, and then infer",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her destiny to herself, which liberty",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She took, but for thus much, thus much to die.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her modesty not suffering her to be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fellow-commissioner with destiny,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She did no more but die; if after her",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Any shall live, which dare true good prefer,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Every such person is her delegate,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To accomplish that which should have been her fate.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They shall make up that book, and shall have thanks",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of fate, and her, for filling up their blanks;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For future virtuous deeds are legacies,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which from the gift of her example rise;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And ’tis in heaven part of spiritual mirth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To see how well the good play her, on earth.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ],
 "notes": [
  {
   "id": "split-from-first-anniversary",
   "kind": "defect",
   "raised": "2026-08-19",
   "what": "This was stanza 3 of the welded john-donne/the-first-anniversary record. Chambers vol. 2 contents and the Standard Ebooks inner heading list A Funeral Elegy as its own poem under An Anatomy of the World.",
   "consequence": "Split. container remains An Anatomy of the World. The flag list is not the split list.",
   "to_settle": "Nothing on the verse.",
   "checked_against": [
    "https://archive.org/details/poemswithelegie01chamgoog",
    "https://github.com/standardebooks/john-donne_poetry"
   ]
  }
 ]
}