{
 "id": "john-donne/elegy-on-mistress-boulstred",
 "title": "Elegy on Mistress Boulstred",
 "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": "Epicedes and Obsequies Upon the Death of Sundry Personages",
 "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": "epicedes-and-obsequies.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": 74,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 63,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Death I recant, and say, “Unsaid by me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whate’er hath slipp’d, that might diminish thee.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Spiritual treason, atheism” ’tis to say",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That any can thy summons disobey.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Th’ earth’s face is but thy table; there are set",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Plants, cattle, men, dishes for death to eat.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "In a rude hunger now he millions draws",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into his bloody, or plaguy, or starved jaws.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Now he will seem to spare, and doth more waste,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Eating the best first, well preserved to last.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Now wantonly he spoils, and eats us not,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But breaks off friends, and lets us piecemeal rot.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor will this earth serve him; he sinks the deep",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where harmless fish monastic silence keep;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Who⁠—were Death dead⁠—by roes of living sand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Might sponge that element, and make it land.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "He rounds the air, and breaks the hymnic notes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In birds’, heaven’s choristers, organic throats;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Which, if they did not die, might seem to be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A tenth rank in the heavenly hierarchy.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "O strong and long-lived death, how camest thou in?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And how without creation didst begin?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou hast, and shalt see dead, before thou diest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All the four Monarchies, and Antichrist.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "How could I think thee nothing, that see now",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In all this All nothing else is, but thou?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Our births and lives, vices and virtues, be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wasteful consumptions, and degrees of thee.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "For we, to live, our bellows wear and breath,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor are we mortal, dying, dead, but death.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And though thou be’st, O mighty bird of prey,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So much reclaim’d by God, that thou must lay",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "All that thou kill’st at His feet, yet doth He",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Reserve but few, and leaves the most to thee.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And of those few now thou hast overthrown",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One whom thy blow makes, not ours, nor thine own.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "She was more storeys high; hopeless to come",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To her soul, thou hast offer’d at her lower room.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Her soul and body was a king and court;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But thou hast both of captain miss’d and fort.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "As houses fall not, though the kings remove,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bodies of saints rest for their souls above.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Death gets ’twixt souls and bodies such a place",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As sin insinuates ’twixt just men and grace;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Both work a separation, no divorce.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her soul is gone to usher up her corse,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Which shall be almost another soul⁠—for there",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bodies are purer than best souls are here.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Because in her, her virtues did outgo",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her years, would’st thou, O emulous death, do so,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And kill her young to thy loss? must the cost",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of beauty and wit, apt to do harm, be lost?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "What though thou found’st her proof ’gainst sins of youth?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O, every age a diverse sin pursueth.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou should’st have stayed, and taken better hold.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shortly, ambitious; covetous, when old,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "She might have proved; and such devotion",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Might once have stray’d to superstition.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "If all her virtues must have grown, yet might",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Abundant virtue have bred a proud delight.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Had she persever’d just, there would have been",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some that would sin, misthinking she did sin.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Such as would call her friendship, love, and feign",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To sociableness, a name profane,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Or sin by tempting, or, not daring that,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By wishing, though they never told her what.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Thus mightst thou have slain more souls had’st thou not cross’d",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thyself, and to triumph, thine army lost.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet though these ways be lost, thou hast left one,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which is, immoderate grief that she is gone.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But we may ’scape that sin, yet weep as much;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our tears are due because we are not such.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Some tears, that knot of friends, her death must cost,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because the chain is broke, but no link lost.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}