{
 "id": "john-donne/the-legacy",
 "title": "The Legacy",
 "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"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 56,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "When last I died, and, dear, I die",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As often as from thee I go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though it be but an hour ago",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—And lovers’ hours be full eternity⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I can remember yet, that I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Something did say, and something did bestow;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though I be dead, which sent me, I might be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mine own executor, and legacy.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I heard me say, “Tell her anon,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That myself,” that is you, not I,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Did kill me,” and when I felt me die,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I bid me send my heart, when I was gone;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I alas! could there find none;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When I had ripp’d, and search’d where hearts should lie,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It kill’d me again, that I who still was true",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In life, in my last will should cozen you.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yet I found something like a heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But colours it, and corners had;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It was not good, it was not bad,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It was entire to none, and few had part;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As good as could be made by art",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It seemed, and therefore for our loss be sad.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I meant to send that heart instead of mine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But O! no man could hold it, for ’twas thine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}