{
 "id": "john-donne/to-sir-henry-wotton",
 "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": [
   {
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    "now": 1,
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    "checked_against": "https://archive.org/details/poemswithelegie01chamgoog",
    "date": "2026-08-20"
   }
  ]
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 70,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 55,
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For thus, friends absent speak. This ease controls",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The tediousness of my life; but for these",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I could ideate nothing which could please;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I should wither in one day, and pass",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To a bottle of hay, that am a lock of grass.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Life is a voyage, and in our lives’ ways",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Countries, courts, towns are rocks, or remoras;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They break or stop all ships, yet our state’s such,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That though than pitch they stain worse, we must touch.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If in the furnace of the raging line,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or under th’ adverse icy pole thou pine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou know’st two temperate regions, girded in,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dwell there; but O, what refuge canst thou win",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Parch’d in the court, and in the country frozen?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall cities built of both extremes be chosen?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can dung or garlic be perfume? Or can",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A scorpion or torpedo cure a man?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cities are worst of all three; of all three?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O knotty riddle! each is worst equally.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cities are sepulchres; they who dwell there",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are carcases, as if none such there were.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And courts are theatres, where some men play",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Princes, some slaves, all to one end, of one clay.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The country is a desert, where the good,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gain’d, inhabits not, born, is not understood.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There men become beasts, and prone to all evils;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In cities blocks, and in a lewd court devils.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As in the first chaos, confusedly,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Each element’s qualities were in th’ other three,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So pride, lust, covetise, being several",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To these three places, yet all are in all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And mingled thus, their issue is incestuous.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Falsehood is denizen’d; virtue is barbarous.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let no man say there, “Virtue’s flinty wall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall lock vice in me, I’ll do none, but know all.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Men are sponges, which, to pour out, receive;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who know false play, rather than lose, deceive.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For in best understandings sin began,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Angels sinn’d first, then devils, and then man.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only perchance beasts sin not; wretched we",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are beasts in all but white integrity.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I think if men, which in these places live,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Durst look in themselves, and themselves retrieve,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They would like strangers greet themselves, seeing then",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Utopian youth grown old Italian.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Be then thine own home, and in thyself dwell;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Inn anywhere; continuance maketh hell.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And seeing the snail, which everywhere doth roam,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Carrying his own house still, still is at home;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Follow⁠—for he is easy paced⁠—this snail,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy gaol.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in the world’s sea do not like cork sleep",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon the water’s face; nor in the deep",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sink like a lead without a line; but as",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fishes glide, leaving no print where they pass,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor making sound; so closely thy course go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let men dispute, whether thou breathe or no.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only in this be no Galenist⁠—to make",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Courts’ hot ambitions wholesome, do not take",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A dram of country’s dullness; do not add",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Correctives, but, as chemics, purge the bad.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But, sir, I advise not you, I rather do",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Say o’er those lessons, which I learn’d of you;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whom, free from Germany’s schisms, and lightness",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of France, and fair Italy’s faithlessness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Having from these suck’d all they had of worth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And brought home that faith which you carried forth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I thoroughly love; but if myself I’ve won",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To know my rules, I have, and you have Donne.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}