{
 "id": "john-donne/loves-growth",
 "title": "Love’s Growth",
 "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": 28,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 50,
  "max_indent": 4
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I scarce believe my love to be so pure",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As I had thought it was,",
    "indent": 4
   },
   {
    "text": "Because it doth endure",
    "indent": 4
   },
   {
    "text": "Vicissitude, and season, as the grass;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My love was infinite, if spring make it more.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With more, not only be no quintessence,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But mix’d of all stuffs, vexing soul, or sense,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And of the sun his active vigour borrow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love’s not so pure, and abstract as they use",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To say, which have no mistress but their Muse;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But as all else, being elemented too,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And yet no greater, but more eminent,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love by the spring is grown;",
    "indent": 4
   },
   {
    "text": "As in the firmament",
    "indent": 4
   },
   {
    "text": "Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From love’s awaken’d root do bud out now.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If, as in water stirr’d more circles be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Produced by one, love such additions take,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Those like so many spheres but one heaven make,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "For they are all concentric unto thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And though each spring do add to love new heat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As princes do in times of action get",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "New taxes, and remit them not in peace,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No winter shall abate this spring’s increase.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}