{
 "id": "john-henry-newman/the-gift-of-preserverance",
 "title": "The Gift of Preserverance",
 "ordinal": "XXVII",
 "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": 27,
 "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": 53,
  "max_indent": 1
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Once, as I brooded o’er my guilty state,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A fever seized me, duties to devise,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To buy me interest in my Saviour’s eyes;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Not that His love I would extenuate,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But scourge and penance, masterful self-hate,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or gift of cost, served by an artifice",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To quell my restless thoughts and envious sighs",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And doubts, which fain heaven’s peace would antedate.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thus as I tossed, He said:⁠—“E’en holiest deeds",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shroud not the soul from God, nor soothe its needs;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Deny thee thine own fears, and wait the end!”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stern lesson! Let me con it day by day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And learn to kneel before the Omniscient Ray,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor shrink, when Truth’s avenging shafts descend!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}