{
 "id": "john-donne/the-bait",
 "title": "The Bait",
 "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",
  "corrections": [
   {
    "line": 2,
    "field": "indent",
    "was": 0,
    "now": 1,
    "why": "Indentation absent from the source markup and measured from the scan: this line starts 3.8 character advances (~1.9 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": 28,
  "n_stanzas": 7,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 41,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Come live with me, and be my love,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And we will some new pleasures prove",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With silken lines and silver hooks.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There will the river whisp’ring run",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Warm’d by thy eyes, more than the sun;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And there th’ enamour’d fish will stay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Begging themselves they may betray.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "When thou wilt swim in that live bath,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Each fish, which every channel hath,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Will amorously to thee swim,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If thou, to be so seen, be’st loth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By sun or moon, thou dark’nest both,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And if myself have leave to see,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I need not their light, having thee.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Let others freeze with angling reeds,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And cut their legs with shells and weeds,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or treacherously poor fish beset,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With strangling snare, or windowy net.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The bedded fish in banks out-wrest;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bewitch poor fishes’ wand’ring eyes.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For thee, thou need’st no such deceit,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For thou thyself art thine own bait:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That fish, that is not catch’d thereby,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Alas! is wiser far than I.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}