{
 "id": "john-donne/change",
 "title": "Change",
 "ordinal": "Elegy III",
 "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": "Elegies",
 "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": "elegies.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": "2026-08-15"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 36,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 54,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Although thy hand and faith, and good works too,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Have seal’d thy love which nothing should undo,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yea, though thou fall back, that apostasy",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Confirm thy love, yet much, much I fear thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Women are like the arts, forced unto none,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Open to all searchers, unprized, if unknown.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If I have caught a bird, and let him fly,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Another fowler using these means, as I,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "May catch the same bird; and, as these things be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Women are made for men, not him nor me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Foxes, and goats⁠—all beasts⁠—change when they please.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall women, more hot, wily, wild than these,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be bound to one man, and did nature then",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Idly make them apter to endure than men?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They’re our clogs, not their own; if a man be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Chain’d to a galley, yet the galley’s free.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who hath a plough-land, casts all his seed corn there,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And yet allows his ground more corn should bear;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though Danuby into the sea must flow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sea receives the Rhine, Volga, and Po.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By nature, which gave it, this liberty",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou lovest, but O! canst thou love it and me?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Likeness glues love; and if that thou so do,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To make us like and love, must I change too?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More than thy hate, I hate it; rather let me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Allow her change, then change as oft as she,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And so not teach, but force my opinion,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To love not anyone, nor everyone.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To live in one land is captivity,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To run all countries a wild roguery.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Waters stink soon, if in one place they bide,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in the vast sea are more putrified;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But when they kiss one bank, and leaving this",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Never look back, but the next bank do kiss,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then are they purest; change is the nursery",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of music, joy, life, and eternity.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}