{
 "id": "john-donne/good-friday-1613-riding-westward",
 "title": "Good-Friday, 1613, Riding Westward",
 "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": "Divine Poems",
 "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": "divine-poems.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": 42,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 57,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Let man’s soul be a sphere, and then, in this,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Th’ intelligence that moves, devotion is;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And as the other spheres, by being grown",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Subject to foreign motion, lose their own,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And being by others hurried every day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Scarce in a year their natural form obey;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For their first mover, and are whirl’d by it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hence is’t, that I am carried towards the west,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This day, when my soul’s form bends to the East.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There I should see a Sun by rising set,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And by that setting endless day beget.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sin had eternally benighted all.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That spectacle of too much weight for me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who sees God’s face, that is self-life, must die;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What a death were it then to see God die?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Could I behold those hands, which span the poles",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Could I behold that endless height, which is",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Zenith to us and our antipodes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Humbled below us? or that blood, which is",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The seat of all our souls, if not of His,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By God for His apparel, ragg’d and torn?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If on these things I durst not look, durst I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On His distressed Mother cast mine eye,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who was God’s partner here, and furnish’d thus",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Half of that sacrifice which ransom’d us?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They’re present yet unto my memory,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For that looks towards them; and Thou look’st towards me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O Saviour, as Thou hang’st upon the tree.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I turn my back to Thee but to receive",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O think me worth Thine anger, punish me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Burn off my rust, and my deformity;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That Thou mayst know me, and I’ll turn my face.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}