{
 "id": "john-henry-newman/isaac",
 "title": "Isaac",
 "ordinal": "LXVII",
 "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": 67,
 "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"
  ]
 },
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  "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,
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  [
   {
    "text": "Many the guileless years the Patriarch spent,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bless’d in the wife a father’s foresight chose;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Many the prayers and gracious deeds, which rose",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Daily thank-offerings from his pilgrim tent.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet these, though written in the heavens, are rent",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From out truth’s lower roll, which sternly shows",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But one sad trespass at his history’s close,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Father’s, son’s, mother’s, and its punishment.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not in their brightness, but their earthly stains",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are the true seed vouchsafed to earthly eyes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sin can read sin, but dimly scans high grace,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So we move heavenward with averted face,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Scared into faith by warning of sin’s pains;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Saints are lower’d, that the world may rise.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}