{
 "id": "john-donne/elegy-on-the-lord-chancellor",
 "title": "Elegy on the Lord Chancellor",
 "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",
  "corrections": [
   {
    "line": 2,
    "field": "indent",
    "was": 0,
    "now": 1,
    "why": "Indentation absent from the source markup and measured from the scan: this line starts 3.1 character advances (~1.6 em) right of its own page's base margin, where the verse sets flush. Converted at 3.0 advances per indent level (tools/defects.py indent).",
    "checked_against": "https://archive.org/details/poemsofjohndonne01donn_1",
    "date": "2026-08-20"
   }
  ]
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 26,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
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  "longest_line_chars": 54,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Sorrow, who to this house scarce knew the way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is, O, heir of it, our all is his prey.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "This strange chance claims strange wonder, and to us",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nothing can be so strange as to weep thus.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis well his life’s loud-speaking works deserve,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And give praise too, our cold tongues could not serve;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis well he kept tears from our eyes before,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That to fit this deep ill we might have store.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O, if a sweet briar climb up by a tree,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If to a paradise that transplanted be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or fell’d, and burnt for holy sacrifice,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet that must wither which by it did rise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As we for him dead; though no family",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "E’er rigg’d a soul for heaven’s discovery",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With whom more venturers more boldly dare",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Venture their states, with him in joy to share,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We lose what all friends loved, him; he gains now",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But life by death, which worst foes would allow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If he could have foes, in whose practice grew",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All virtues, whose name subtle schoolmen knew.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What ease can hope that we shall see him beget,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When we must die first, and cannot die yet?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His children are his pictures; O, they be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pictures of him dead, senseless, cold as he.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Here needs no marble tomb, since he is gone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He, and about him his, are turn’d to stone.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}