{
 "id": "john-donne/the-flea",
 "title": "The Flea",
 "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": 11,
 "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": 27,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 53,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Mark but this flea, and mark in this,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How little that which thou deniest me is;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou know’st that this cannot be said",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet this enjoys before it woo,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And this, alas! is more than we would do.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O stay, three lives in one flea spare,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where we almost, yea, more than married are",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This flea is you and I, and this",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And cloister’d in these living walls of jet.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though use make you apt to kill me,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Let not to that self-murder added be,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Cruel and sudden, hast thou since",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wherein could this flea guilty be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Except in that drop which it suck’d from thee?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Find’st not thyself nor me the weaker now.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis true; then learn how false fears be;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Just so much honour, when thou yield’st to me,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}