{
 "id": "john-donne/a-nocturnal-upon-st-lucys-day-being-the-shortest-day",
 "title": "A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day",
 "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": "Songs and Sonnets",
 "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": "songs-and-sonnets.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": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 45,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 53,
  "max_indent": 3
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "’Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sun is spent, and now his flasks",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The world’s whole sap is sunk;",
    "indent": 3
   },
   {
    "text": "The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Compared with me, who am their epitaph.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Study me then, you who shall lovers be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At the next world, that is, at the next spring;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For I am a very dead thing,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "In whom Love wrought new alchemy.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "For his art did express",
    "indent": 3
   },
   {
    "text": "A quintessence even from nothingness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From dull privations, and lean emptiness;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of absence, darkness, death⁠—things which are not.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I, by Love’s limbec, am the grave",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Have we two wept, and so",
    "indent": 3
   },
   {
    "text": "Drown’d the whole world, us two; oft did we grow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To be two chaoses, when we did show",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Care to aught else; and often absences",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But I am by her death⁠—which word wrongs her⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the first nothing the elixir grown;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were I a man, that I were one",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I needs must know; I should prefer,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "If I were any beast,",
    "indent": 3
   },
   {
    "text": "Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And love; all, all some properties invest.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If I an ordinary nothing were,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As shadow, a light, and body must be here.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But I am none; nor will my sun renew.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At this time to the Goat is run",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To fetch new lust, and give it you,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Enjoy your summer all,",
    "indent": 3
   },
   {
    "text": "Since she enjoys her long night’s festival.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let me prepare towards her, and let me call",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Both the year’s and the day’s deep midnight is.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}