{
 "id": "john-donne/negative-love",
 "title": "Negative Love",
 "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": 13,
 "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": 18,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 38,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I never stoop’d so low, as they",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which on an eye, cheek, lip, can prey;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Seldom to them which soar no higher",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Than virtue, or the mind to admire.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "For sense and understanding may",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Know what gives fuel to their fire;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "My love, though silly, is more brave;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For may I miss, whene’er I crave,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If I know yet what I would have.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If that be simply perfectest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which can by no way be express’d",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But negatives, my love is so.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To all, which all love, I say no.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "If any who deciphers best,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What we know not⁠—ourselves⁠—can know,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Let him teach me that nothing. This",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As yet my ease and comfort is,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though I speed not, I cannot miss.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}