{
 "id": "john-donne/to-sir-henry-goodyere",
 "title": "To Sir Henry Goodyere",
 "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": "Letters to Several Personages",
 "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": "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"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 48,
  "n_stanzas": 12,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 54,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Who makes the past a pattern for next year,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Turns no new leaf, but still the same things reads;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Seen things he sees again, heard things doth hear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And makes his life but like a pair of beads.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "A palace, when ’tis that which it should be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leaves growing, and stands such, or else decays;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But he which dwells there is not so; for he",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strives to urge upward, and his fortune raise.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "So had your body her morning, hath her noon,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And shall not better; her next change is night;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But her fair, larger guest, to whom sun and moon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are sparks, and short-lived, claims another right.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The noble soul by age grows lustier;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her appetite and her digestion mend.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "We must not starve, nor hope to pamper her",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With women’s milk, and pap, unto the end.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Provide you manlier diet. You have seen",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All libraries, which are schools, camps, and courts;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But ask your garners if you have not been",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In harvest too indulgent to your sports.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Would you redeem it? then yourself transplant",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Awhile from hence. Perchance outlandish ground",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Bears no more wit than ours; but yet more scant",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are those diversions there, which here abound.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "To be a stranger hath that benefit,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We can beginnings, but not habits choke.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Go⁠—whither? hence. You get, if you forget;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "New faults, till they prescribe to us, are smoke.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Our soul, whose country’s heaven, and God her Father,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into this world, corruption’s sink, is sent;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet so much in her travel she doth gather,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That she returns home wiser than she went.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It pays you well, if it teach you to spare,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And make you ashamed to make your hawks’ praise yours,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Which when herself she lessens in the air,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You then first say, that high enough she towers.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "However, keep the lively taste you hold",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of God; love Him as now, but fear Him more;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And in your afternoons think what you told",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And promised Him, at morning prayer before.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Let falsehood like a discord anger you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Else be not froward. But why do I touch",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Things of which none is in your practice new?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And fables, or fruit-trenchers teach as much.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But thus I make you keep your promise, sir,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Riding I had you, though you still stay’d there;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And in these thoughts, although you never stir,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You came with me to Mitcham, and are here.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}