{
 "id": "john-donne/to-the-countess-of-salisbury-august-1614",
 "title": "To the Countess of Salisbury, August 1614",
 "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",
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    "checked_against": "https://archive.org/details/poemsofjohndonne01donn_1",
    "date": "2026-08-20"
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  [
   {
    "text": "Fair, great, and good, since seeing you we see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What heaven can do, what any earth can be;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Since now your beauty shines; now, when the sun,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grown stale, is to so low a value run,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That his dishevell’d beams, and scatter’d fires",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Serve but for ladies’ periwigs and tires",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In lovers’ sonnets, you come to repair",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God’s book of creatures, teaching what is fair;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since now, when all is wither’d, shrunk, and dried,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All virtues ebb’d out to a dead, low tide,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All the world’s frame being crumbled into sand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where every man thinks by himself to stand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Integrity, friendship, and confidence,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cements of greatness, being vapour’d hence,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And narrow man being fill’d with little shares,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Court, city, church are all shops of smallwares;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All having blown to sparks their noble fire,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And drawn their sound gold ingot into wire;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All trying by a love of littleness",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To make abridgments, and to draw to less",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even that nothing which at first we were;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since in these times your greatness doth appear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that we learn by it, that man, to get",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Towards Him that’s infinite, must first be great:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since in an age so ill, as none is fit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So much as to accuse, much less mend it",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—For who can judge, or witness of those times,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where all alike are guilty of the crimes?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where he that would be good, is thought by all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A monster, or at best fantastical⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since now you durst be good, and that I do",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Discern by daring to contemplate you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That there may be degrees of fair, great, good,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through your light, largeness, virtue, understood;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If in this sacrifice of mine be shown",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Any small spark of these, call it your own",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And if things like these have been said by me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of others, call not that idolatry;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For had God made man first, and man had seen",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The third day’s fruits and flowers, and various green,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He might have said the best that he could say",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of those fair creatures which were made that day;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And when next day he had admired the birth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of sun, moon, stars, fairer than late-prais’d earth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He might have said the best that he could say,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And not be chid for praising yesterday;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So though some things are not together true,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As, that another’s worthiest, and, that you;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet, to say so, doth not condemn a man,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If, when he spoke them, they were both true then.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How fair a proof of this in our soul grows;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We first have souls of growth and sense; and those,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When our last soul, our soul immortal, came,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were swallow’d into it, and have no name.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor doth he injure those souls, which doth cast",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The power and praise of both them on the last;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No more do I wrong any, if I adore",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The same things now which I adored before,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The subject changed, and measure; the same thing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a low constable, and in the king",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I reverence, his power to work on me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So did I humbly reverence each degree",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of fair, great, good, but more, now I am come",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From having found their walks, to find their home.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And as I owe my first souls thanks, that they",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For my last soul did fit and mould my clay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So am I debtor unto them, whose worth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Enabled me to profit, and take forth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This new great lesson, thus to study you;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which none, not reading others first, could do.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor lack I light to read this book, though I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a dark cave, yea, in a grave do lie;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For as your fellow-angels, so you do",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Illustrate them who come to study you.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The first whom we in histories do find",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To have profess’d all arts, was one born blind;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He lack’d those eyes beasts have as well as we,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not those by which angels are seen and see.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So, though I’m born without those eyes to live,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which fortune, who hath none herself, doth give,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which are fit means to see bright courts and you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet, may I see you thus, as now I do,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall by that all goodness have discern’d,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And though I burn my library, be learn’d.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}