{
 "id": "john-donne/an-epithalamion-or-marriage-song-on-the-lady-elizabeth-and-count-palat",
 "title": "An Epithalamion, or Marriage Song on the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine Being Married on St. Valentine’s 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": "Epithalamions, or Marriage Songs",
 "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": "epithalamions-or-marriage-songs.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": 112,
  "n_stanzas": 8,
  "n_parts": 8,
  "longest_line_chars": 54,
  "max_indent": 2
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [
  {
   "ordinal": "I",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    0,
    1
   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "II",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    1,
    2
   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "III",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    2,
    3
   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "IV",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    3,
    4
   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "V",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    4,
    5
   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "VI",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    5,
    6
   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "VII",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    6,
    7
   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "VIII",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    7,
    8
   ]
  }
 ],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Hail Bishop Valentine, whose day this is;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All the air is thy diocese,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "And all the chirping choristers",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "And other birds are thy parishioners;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou marriest every year",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "The lyric lark, and the grave whispering dove,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sparrow that neglects his life for love,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The household bird with the red stomacher;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou makest the blackbird speed as soon,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "As doth the goldfinch, or the halcyon;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The husband cock looks out, and straight is sped,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And meets his wife, which brings her featherbed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This day more cheerfully than ever shine;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This day, which might inflame thyself, old Valentine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Till now, thou warm’d’st with multiplying loves",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Two larks, two sparrows, or two doves;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "All that is nothing unto this;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "For thou this day couplest two phoenixes;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou makst a taper see",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "What the sun never saw, and what the ark",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—Which was of fowls and beasts the cage and park⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Did not contain, one bed contains, through thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Two phoenixes, whose joined breasts",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Are unto one another mutual nests,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where motion kindles such fires as shall give",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Young phoenixes, and yet the old shall live;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose love and courage never shall decline,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But make the whole year through, thy day, O Valentine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thyself from thine affection",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Takest warmth enough, and from thine eye",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "All lesser birds will take their jollity.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Up, up, fair bride, and call",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy stars from out their several boxes, take",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and make",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thyself a constellation of them all;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And by their blazing signify",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "That a great princess falls, but doth not die.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be thou a new star, that to us portends",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ends of much wonder; and be thou those ends.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since thou dost this day in new glory shine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "May all men date records from this day, Valentine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Come forth, come forth, and as one glorious flame",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Meeting another grows the same,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "So meet thy Frederick, and so",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "To an inseparable union go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since separation",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Falls not on such things as are infinite,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor things, which are but one, can disunite.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You’re twice inseparable, great, and one;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Go then to where the bishop stays,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "To make you one, his way, which divers ways",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Must be effected; and when all is past,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that you’re one, by hearts and hands made fast,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You two have one way left, yourselves to entwine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Besides this bishop’s knot, of Bishop Valentine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But O, what ails the sun, that here he stays,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Longer today than other days?",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Stays he new light from these to get?",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "And finding here such stars, is loth to set?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And why do you two walk,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "So slowly paced in this procession?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is all your care but to be look’d upon,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And be to others spectacle and talk?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The feast with gluttonous delays",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Is eaten, and too long their meat they praise;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The masquers come late, and I think, will stay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like fairies, till the cock crow them away.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Alas! did not antiquity assign",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A night as well as day, to thee, old Valentine?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "They did, and night is come; and yet we see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Formalities retarding thee.",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "What mean these ladies, which⁠—as though",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "They were to take a clock in pieces⁠—go",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So nicely about the bride?",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "A bride, before a “Good night” could be said,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Should vanish from her clothes into her bed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As souls from bodies steal, and are not spied.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But now she’s laid; what though she be?",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet there are more delays, for where is he?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He comes and passeth through sphere after sphere;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "First her sheets, then her arms, then anywhere.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let not this day, then, but this night be thine;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy day was but the eve to this, O Valentine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Here lies a she sun, and a he moon there;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She gives the best light to his sphere;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Or each is both, and all, and so",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "They unto one another nothing owe;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And yet they do, but are",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "So just and rich in that coin which they pay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That neither would, nor needs forbear, nor stay;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Neither desires to be spared nor to spare.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They quickly pay their debt, and then",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Take no acquittances, but pay again;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They pay, they give, they lend, and so let fall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No such occasion to be liberal.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More truth, more courage in these two do shine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than all thy turtles have and sparrows, Valentine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And by this act of these two phoenixes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nature again restorèd is;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "For since these two are two no more,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "There’s but one phoenix still, as was before.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rest now at last, and we⁠—",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "As satyrs watch the sun’s uprise⁠—will stay",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Waiting when your eyes opened let out day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only desired because your face we see.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Others near you shall whispering speak,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "And wagers lay, at which side day will break,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And win by observing, then, whose hand it is",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That opens first a curtain, hers or his:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This will be tried tomorrow after nine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till which hour, we thy day enlarge, O Valentine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}