{
 "id": "john-donne/the-anagram",
 "title": "The Anagram",
 "ordinal": "Elegy II",
 "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": "Elegies",
 "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": "elegies.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": "2026-08-15",
  "corrections": [
   {
    "line": 2,
    "field": "indent",
    "was": 0,
    "now": 2,
    "why": "Indentation absent from the source markup and measured from the scan: this line starts 6.7 character advances (~3.3 em) right of its own page's base margin, where the verse sets flush. Converted at 3.0 advances per indent level (tools/defects.py indent).",
    "checked_against": "https://archive.org/details/poemsofjohndonne01donn_1",
    "date": "2026-08-20"
   }
  ]
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 54,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 53,
  "max_indent": 2
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Marry, and love thy Flavia, for she",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hath all things, whereby others beauteous be;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "For, though her eyes be small, her mouth is great;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though they be ivory, yet her teeth be jet;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though they be dim, yet she is light enough;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And though her harsh hair fall, her skin is tough;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What though her cheeks be yellow, her hair’s red,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Give her thine, and she hath a maidenhead.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These things are beauty’s elements; where these",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Meet in one, that one must, as perfect, please.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If red and white, and each good quality",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be in thy wench, ne’er ask where it doth lie.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In buying things perfumed, we ask, if there",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be musk and amber in it, but not where.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though all her parts be not in th’ usual place,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She hath yet an anagram of a good face.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If we might put the letters but one way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In that lean dearth of words, what could we say?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When by the gamut some musicians make",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A perfect song, others will undertake,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By the same gamut changed, to equal it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Things simply good can never be unfit;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She’s fair as any, if all be like her;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And if none be, then she is singular.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All love is wonder; if we justly do",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Account her wonderful, why not lovely too?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Choose this face, changed by no deformities.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Women are all like angels; the fair be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like those which fell to worse; but such as she,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like to good angels, nothing can impair:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis less grief to be foul, than to have been fair.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For one night’s revels, silk and gold we choose,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But, in long journeys, cloth, and leather use.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beauty is barren oft; best husbands say",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There is best land, where there is foulest way.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh, what a sovereign plaster will she be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If thy past sins have taught thee jealousy!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Here needs no spies, nor eunuchs; her commit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Safe to thy foes, yea, to a marmoset.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like Belgia’s cities the round country drowns,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That dirty foulness guards and arms the towns,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So doth her face guard her; and so, for thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which forced by business, absent oft must be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She, whose face, like clouds, turns the day to night;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who, mightier than the sea, makes Moors seem white;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who, though seven years she in the stews had laid,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A nunnery durst receive, and think a maid;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And though in childbed’s labour she did lie,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Midwives would swear, ’twere but a tympany;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whom, if she accuse herself, I credit less",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than witches, which impossibles confess;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One like none, and liked of none, fittest were;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For things in fashion every man will wear.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}