{
 "id": "john-donne/the-perfume",
 "title": "The Perfume",
 "ordinal": "Elegy IV",
 "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,
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    "was": 0,
    "now": 2,
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    "checked_against": "https://archive.org/details/poemsofjohndonne01donn_1",
    "date": "2026-08-20"
   }
  ]
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 72,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 55,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Once, and but once, found in thy company,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All thy supposed escapes are laid on me;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "And as a thief at bar is question’d there",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By all the men that have been robb’d that year,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So am I⁠—by this traitorous means surprised⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By thy hydroptic father catechized.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though he had wont to search with glazèd eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As though he came to kill a cockatrice;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though he hath oft sworn that he would remove",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy beauty’s beauty, and food of our love,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hope of his goods, if I with thee were seen,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet close and secret, as our souls, we’ve been.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though thy immortal mother, which doth lie",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still buried in her bed, yet will not die,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Takes this advantage to sleep out daylight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And watch thy entries and returns all night;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, when she takes thy hand, and would seem kind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Doth search what rings and armlets she can find;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And kissing notes the colour of thy face;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And fearing lest thou’rt swollen, doth thee embrace;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to try if thou long, doth name strange meats;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And notes thy paleness, blushing, sighs, and sweats;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And politicly will to thee confess",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sins of her own youth’s rank lustiness;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet love these sorceries did remove, and move",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thee to gull thine own mother for my love.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy little brethren, which like fairy sprites",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oft skipp’d into our chamber, those sweet nights,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And kiss’d, and ingled on thy father’s knee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were bribed next day to tell what they did see;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The grim-eight-foot-high-iron-bound serving-man,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That oft names God in oaths, and only then,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He that, to bar the first gate, doth as wide",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As the great Rhodian Colossus stride",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—Which, if in hell no other pains there were,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Makes me fear hell, because he must be there⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though by thy father he were hired to this,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Could never witness any touch or kiss.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But O! too common ill, I brought with me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That, which betray’d me to mine enemy,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A loud perfume, which at my entrance cried",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "E’en at thy father’s nose; so were we spied.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When, like a tyrant king, that in his bed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Smelt gunpowder, the pale wretch shivered,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had it been some bad smell, he would have thought",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That his own feet, or breath, that smell had wrought;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But as we in our isle imprisoned,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where cattle only and divers dogs are bred,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The precious unicorns strange monsters call,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So thought he good strange, that had none at all.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I taught my silks their whistling to forbear;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even my oppress’d shoes dumb and speechless were;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only thou bittersweet, whom I had laid",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Next me, me traitorously hast betray’d,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And unsuspected hast invisibly",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At once fled unto him, and stay’d with me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Base excrement of earth, which dost confound",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sense from distinguishing the sick from sound!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By thee the silly amorous sucks his death",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By drawing in a leprous harlot’s breath;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By thee, the greatest stain to man’s estate",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Falls on us, to be call’d effeminate;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though you be much loved in the prince’s hall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There things that seem exceed substantial;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gods, when ye fumed on altars, were pleased well,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because you were burnt, not that they liked your smell;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You’re loathsome all, being taken simply alone;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall we love ill things join’d, and hate each one?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If you were good, your good doth soon decay;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And you are rare; that takes the good away:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And my perfumes I give most willingly",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To embalm thy father’s corpse; what? will he die?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}