{
 "id": "john-henry-newman/abraham",
 "title": "Abraham",
 "ordinal": "LI",
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "John Henry Newman",
 "poet_slug": "john-henry-newman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Verses on Various Occasions",
 "book_slug": "verses-on-various-occasions",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 51,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1903,
  "venue": "Verses on Various Occasions (1903)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/a600744000newmuoft"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/john-henry-newman_verses-on-various-occasions",
  "file": "verses-on-various-occasions.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "http://www.newmanreader.org/works/verses",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009038168",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48927",
   "https://archive.org/details/dreamofgerontius01newmuoft"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 14,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 52,
  "max_indent": 1
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "The better portion didst thou choose, Great Heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy God’s first choice, and pledge of Gentile grace!",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Faith’s truest type, he with unruffled face",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Bore the world’s smile, and bade her slaves depart;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whether, a trader, with no trader’s art,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He buys in Canaan his last resting-place⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Or freely yields rich Siddim’s ample space⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Or braves the rescue, and the battle’s smart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet scorns the heathen gifts of those he saved.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O happy in their soul’s high solitude,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who commune thus with God, and not with earth!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Amid the scoffings of the wealth-enslaved,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A ready prey, as though in absent mood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They calmly move, nor reck the unmanner’d mirth.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}