{
 "id": "john-donne/elegy",
 "title": "Elegy",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": "Death",
 "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": "Language, thou art too narrow and too weak",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To ease us now; great sorrows cannot speak.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "If we could sigh out accents, and weep words,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grief wears, and lessens, that tears breath affords.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Sad hearts, the less they seem, the more they are",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—So guiltiest men stand mutest at the bar⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Not that they know not, feel not their estate,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But extreme sense hath made them desperate.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Sorrow, to whom we owe all that we be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tyrant, in the fifth and greatest monarchy,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Was ’t that she did possess all hearts before,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou hast kill’d her, to make thy empire more?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Knew’st thou some would, that knew her not, lament,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As in a deluge perish th’ innocent?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Was ’t not enough to have that palace won,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But thou must raze it too, that was undone?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Hadst thou stay’d there, and look’d out at her eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All had adored thee, that now from thee flies;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "For they let out more light than they took in,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They told not when, but did the day begin.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "She was too sapphirine and clear for thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Clay, flint, and jet now thy fit dwellings be.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Alas! she was too pure, but not too weak;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whoe’er saw crystal ordnance but would break?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And if we be thy conquest, by her fall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou hast lost thy end; in her we perish all;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Or if we live, we live but to rebel,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That know her better now, who knew her well.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "If we should vapour out, and pine, and die,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since she first went, that were not misery.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "She changed our world with hers; now she is gone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mirth and prosperity is oppression;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "For of all moral virtues she was all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That ethics speak of virtues cardinal.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Her soul was paradise; the cherubin",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Set to keep it was grace, that kept out sin.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "She had no more than let in death, for we",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All reap consumption from one fruitful tree.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "God took her hence, lest some of us should love",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her, like that plant, Him and His laws above;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And when we tears, He mercy shed in this,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To raise our minds to heaven, where now she is",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Who if her virtues would have let her stay",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We had had a saint, have now a holiday.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Her heart was that strange bush, where sacred fire,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Religion, did not consume, but inspire",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Such piety, so chaste use of God’s day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That what we turn to feast, she turn’d to pray;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And did prefigure here, in devout taste,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The rest of her high Sabbath, which shall last.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Angels did hand her up, who next God dwell,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For she was of that order whence most fell;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Her body’s left with us, lest some had said,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She could not die, except they saw her dead;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "For from less virtue, and less beauteousness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Gentiles framed them gods and goddesses.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The ravenous earth, that now woos her to be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Earth too, will be a Lemnia, and the tree",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "That wraps that crystal in a wooden tomb",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall be took up spruce, fill’d with diamond.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And we her sad glad friends all bear a part",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of grief, for all would break a Stoic’s heart.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}