{
 "id": "john-donne/to-mr-edward-guilpin",
 "title": "To Mr. Edward Guilpin",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "John Donne",
 "poet_slug": "john-donne",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poetry",
 "book_slug": null,
 "book_kind": "compilation",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": "Letters to Several Personages",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1899,
  "venue": "Edmund Gosse, The Life and Letters of John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's (London, William Heinemann, 1899), vol. I, p. 82, as an epistle “to Mr. E. G.”",
  "note": "Not in any of the old editions of the Poems. Gosse prints it from the Westmoreland MS. and says it “has never till now been printed”; the page is on the scan. The identification of E. G. with Edward Guilpin is Gosse's conjecture, which Grierson's 1912 edition follows in its heading.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/lifelettersofjoh01gossuoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofjohndonne02donnuoft"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/john-donne_poetry",
  "file": "letters-to-several-personages.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 4.3 character advances (~2.2 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": 20,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 50,
  "max_indent": 1
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Even as lame things thirst their perfection, so",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The slimy rhymes bred in our vale below,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Bearing with them much of my love and heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fly unto that Parnassus, where thou art.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There thou o’erseest London: here I have been",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By staying in London, too much overseen.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now pleasure’s dearth our city doth posses,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our theatres are filled with emptiness;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As lank and thin is every street and way",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As a woman delivered yesterday.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nothing whereat to laugh my spleen espies",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But bearbaitings or Law exercise.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Therefore I’ll leave it, and in the country strive",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pleasure, now fled from London, to retrieve.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Do thou so too: and fill not like a bee",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy thighs with honey, but as plenteously",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As Russian merchants, thyself’s whole vessel load,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then at winter retail it here abroad.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bless us with Suffolk’s sweets; and as that is",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy garden, make thy hive and warehouse this.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}