{
 "id": "john-donne/air-and-angels",
 "title": "Air and Angels",
 "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": 28,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 2
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Twice or thrice had I loved thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before I knew thy face or name;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Angels affect us oft, and worshipp’d be.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still when, to where thou wert, I came,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But since my soul, whose child love is,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More subtle than the parent is",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Love must not be, but take a body too;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And therefore what thou wert, and who,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I bid love ask, and now",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "That it assume thy body, I allow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And fix itself in thy lips, eyes, and brow.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And so more steadily to have gone,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "With wares which would sink admiration,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I saw I had love’s pinnace overfraught;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy every hair for love to work upon",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Is much too much; some fitter must be sought;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For, nor in nothing, nor in things",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then as an angel face and wings",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So thy love may be my love’s sphere;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Just such disparity",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "As is ’twixt air’s and angels’ purity,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Twixt women’s love, and men’s, will ever be.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}