{
 "id": "john-donne/xviii",
 "title": "XVIII",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "John Donne",
 "poet_slug": "john-donne",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poetry",
 "book_slug": null,
 "book_kind": "compilation",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": "Holy Sonnets",
 "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. II, Appendix C, among the Holy Sonnets printed from the Westmoreland MS.; “Show me dear Christ, thy spouse, so bright and clear”",
  "note": "Not in any of the old editions of the Poems: twelve of the Holy Sonnets were printed in 1633 and four more added in 1635, and Gosse states that the series of nineteen “have never, until now, been printed in complete form”, giving the Westmoreland text in an appendix to his second volume. Grierson's 1912 edition records that the three Westmoreland sonnets had already been printed by Gosse.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/lifeandlettersof02gossuoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofjohndonne02donnuoft"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/john-donne_poetry",
  "file": "divine-poems.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 4.7 character advances (~2.3 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": 14,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 53,
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Show me dear Christ, thy spouse, so bright and clear.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What, is it she, which on the other shore",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Goes richly painted? or which robbed and tore",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Laments and mourns in Germany and here?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sleeps she a thousand, then peeps up one year?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is she self truth and errs? now new, now outwore?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Doth she, and did she, and shall she evermore",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On one, on seven, or on no hill appear?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dwells she with us, or like adventuring knights",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "First travail we to seek and then make Love?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Betray kind husband thy spouse to our sights,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And let mine amorous soul court thy mild dove,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who is most true, and pleasing to thee, then",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When she is embraced and open to most men.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}