{
 "id": "john-henry-newman/seeds-in-the-air",
 "title": "Seeds in the Air",
 "ordinal": "XX",
 "subtitle": "For an Album",
 "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": 20,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": "“Igneus est ollis vigor, et coelestis origo / Seminibus.”",
 "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": 32,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 28,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Could I hit on a theme",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To fashion my verse on,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Not long would I seem",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A lack-courtesy person.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But I have not the skill,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor talisman strong,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To summon at will",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Spirit of song.⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Bright thoughts are roaming",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unseen in the air;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Like comets, their coming",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is sudden and rare.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "They strike, and they enter,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And light up the brain,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Which thrills to its centre",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With rapturous pain.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the chance-seed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is piously nursed,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Brighter succeed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the path of the first.⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "One sighs to the Muse,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or the sweet nightingale,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "One sips the night-dews",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which moon-beams exhale.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "All this is a fiction;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I never could find",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "A suitable friction",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To frenzy my mind.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "What use are empirics?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No gas on their shelf",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Can make one spout lyrics",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In spite of oneself!",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}