{
 "id": "john-donne/elegy-on-the-lady-markham",
 "title": "Elegy on the Lady Markham",
 "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": 62,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 52,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Man is the world, and death the ocean,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To which God gives the lower parts of man,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "This sea environs all, and though as yet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God hath set marks and bounds ’twixt us and it,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet doth it roar, and gnaw, and still pretend,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And breaks our bank, whene’er it takes a friend.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Then our land waters, tears of passion, vent;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our waters, then, above our firmament",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "—Tears which our soul doth for her sins let fall⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Take all a brackish taste, and funeral.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And e’en those tears which should wash sin, are sin.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We, after God’s “No,” drown the world again.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Nothing but man of all envenom’d things",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Doth work upon itself with inborn stings.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Tears are false spectacles; we cannot see,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through passion’s mist, what we are or what she.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "In her this sea of death hath made no breach,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But as the tide doth wash the slimy beach,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And leaves embroider’d works upon the sand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So is her flesh refined by death’s cold hand.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "As men of China, after an age’s stay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Do take up porcelain, where they buried clay;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "So at this grave, her limbec⁠—which refines",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls and mines,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of which this flesh was⁠—her soul shall inspire",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Flesh of such stuff, as God, when His last fire",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Annuls this world, to recompense it, shall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Make and name then th’ elixir of this all.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "They say the sea, when it gains, loseth too;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If carnal death, the younger brother, do",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Usurp the body, our soul, which subject is",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To th’ elder death by sin, is freed by this.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "They perish both, when they attempt the just;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For graves our trophies are, and both death’s dust.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "So, unobnoxious now, she hath buried both;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For none to death sins, that to sin is loth;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor do they die, which are not loth to die;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So hath she this and that virginity.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Grace was in her extremely diligent,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That kept her from sin, yet made her repent.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of what small spots pure white complains! Alas",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How little poison cracks a crystal glass!",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "She sinn’d but just enough to let us see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That God’s word must be true, “All, sinners be.”",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "So much did zeal her conscience rarify,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That extreme truth lacked little of a lie,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Making omissions acts, laying the touch",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of sin on things that sometime may be such.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "As Moses’ cherubins, whose natures do",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Surpass all speed, by him are winged too;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "So would her soul, already in heaven, seem then",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To climb by tears the common stairs of men.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "How fit she was for God, I am content",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To speak, that death his vain haste may repent.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "How fit for us, how even and how sweet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How good in all her titles, and how meet",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To have reform’d this forward heresy,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That women can no parts of friendship be,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "How moral, how divine, shall not be told,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lest they that hear her virtues, think her old;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And lest we take death’s part, and make him glad",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of such a prey, and to his triumph add.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}