{
 "id": "john-donne/the-broken-heart",
 "title": "The Broken Heart",
 "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": 8,
 "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": 32,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 47,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "He is stark mad, whoever says,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That he hath been in love an hour,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet not that love so soon decays,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But that it can ten in less space",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Who will believe me, if I swear devour;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I have had the plague a year?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who would not laugh at me, if I should say",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I saw a flash of powder burn a day?",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ah, what a trifle is a heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If once into love’s hands it come!",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "All other griefs allow a part",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To other griefs, and ask themselves but some;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "They come to us, but us love draws;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He swallows us and never chaws;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By him, as by chain’d shot, whole ranks do die;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If ’twere not so, what did become",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of my heart when I first saw thee?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I brought a heart into the room,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But from the room I carried none with me.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "If it had gone to thee, I know",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mine would have taught thine heart to show",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More pity unto me; but Love, alas!",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "At one first blow did shiver it as glass.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yet nothing can to nothing fall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor any place be empty quite;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Therefore I think my breast hath all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Those pieces still, though they be not unite;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And now, as broken glasses show",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A hundred lesser faces, so",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But after one such love, can love no more.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}