{
 "id": "john-donne/loves-exchange",
 "title": "Love’s Exchange",
 "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": "Songs and Sonnets",
 "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": "songs-and-sonnets.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": 6,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Love, any devil else but you",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would for a given soul give something too.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At court your fellows every day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Give th’ art of rhyming, huntsmanship, or play,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For them which were their own before;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only I have nothing, which gave more,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But am, alas! by being lowly, lower.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I ask no dispensation now,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To falsify a tear, or sigh, or vow;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I do not sue from thee to draw",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A non obstante on nature’s law;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These are prerogatives, they inhere",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In thee and thine; none should forswear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Except that he Love’s minion were.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Give me thy weakness, make me blind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Both ways, as thou and thine, in eyes and mind;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love, let me never know that this",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is love, or, that love childish is;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let me not know that others know",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That she knows my pains, lest that so",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A tender shame make me mine own new woe.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If thou give nothing, yet thou ’rt just,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because I would not thy first motions trust;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Small towns which stand stiff, till great shot",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Enforce them, by war’s law condition not;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Such in Love’s warfare is my case;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I may not article for grace, Having put",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love at last to show this face.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "This face, by which he could command",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And change th’ idolatry of any land,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This face, which, wheresoe’er it comes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can call vow’d men from cloisters, dead from tombs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And melt both poles at once, and store",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Deserts with cities, and make more",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mines in the earth, than quarries were before.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For this Love is enraged with me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet kills not; if I must example be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To future rebels, if th’ unborn",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Must learn by my being cut up and torn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Kill, and dissect me, Love; for this",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Torture against thine own end is;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rack’d carcasses make ill anatomies.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}