{
 "id": "john-keats/sonnet-9",
 "title": "Sonnet",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "John Keats",
 "poet_slug": "john-keats",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats",
 "book_slug": "life-letters-and-literary-remains",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1848,
  "venue": "Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats (1848)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/lifelettersliter00keat",
   "https://archive.org/details/lifelettersliter02keat"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/john-keats_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://archive.org/details/completepoetical01keat",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005261190"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 14,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 46,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No God, no Demon of severe response,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then to my human heart I turn at once.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Heart! Thou and I are here sad and alone;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain!",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Why did I laugh? I know this Being’s lease,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet would I on this very midnight cease,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the world’s gaudy ensigns see in shreds;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But Death intenser⁠—Death is Life’s high meed.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}