{
 "id": "john-donne/to-sir-henry-wotton-2",
 "title": "To Sir Henry Wotton",
 "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",
  "corrections": [
   {
    "line": 2,
    "field": "indent",
    "was": 0,
    "now": 2,
    "why": "Indentation absent from the source markup and measured from the scan: this line starts 5.5 character advances (~2.7 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": 27,
  "n_stanzas": 9,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 55,
  "max_indent": 2
 },
 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Here’s no more news than virtue; I may as well",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tell you Calais, or Saint Michael’s tales, as tell",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "That vice doth here habitually dwell.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yet as, to get stomachs, we walk up and down,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And toil to sweeten rest; so, may God frown,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If, but to loathe both, I haunt court or town.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For, here, no one is from th’ extremity",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of vice by any other reason free,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But that the next to him still’s worse than he.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "In this world’s warfare, they whom rugged Fate",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(God’s commissary) doth so throughly hate,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As in the court’s squadron to marshal their state;",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If they stand arm’d with silly honesty,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With wishes, prayers, and neat integrity,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like Indians ’gainst Spanish hosts they be.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Suspicious boldness to this place belongs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to have as many ears as all have tongues;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tender to know, tough to acknowledge wrongs.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Believe me, sir, in my youth’s giddiest days,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When to be like the court was a play’s praise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Plays were not so like courts, as courts like plays.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Then let us at these mimic antics jest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose deepest projects and egregious gests",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are but dull morals of a game at chests.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But now ’tis incongruity to smile,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Therefore I end; and bid farewell awhile;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“At court,”⁠—though “from court” were the better style.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}