{
 "id": "matthew-arnold/religious-isolation",
 "title": "Religious Isolation",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": "To the Same Friend",
 "poet": "Matthew Arnold",
 "poet_slug": "matthew-arnold",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems",
 "book_slug": "the-strayed-reveller",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1849,
  "venue": "The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/strayedrevellero00arno"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/matthew-arnold_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27739",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofmatthewar00arnouoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/poeticalworksofm00arn",
   "https://archive.org/details/inmemoriamawrea00marsgoog"
  ],
  "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": 47,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Children (as such forgive them) have I known,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ever in their own eager pastime bent",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To make the incurious bystander, intent",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On his own swarming thoughts, an interest own;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Too fearful or too fond to play alone.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Do thou, whom light in thine own inmost soul",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Not less thy boast) illuminates, control",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wishes unworthy of a man full-grown.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What though the holy secret which moulds thee",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mould not the solid Earth? though never Winds",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Have whisper’d it to the complaining Sea,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nature’s great law, and law of all men’s minds?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To its own impulse every creature stirs:",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Live by thy light, and Earth will live by hers!",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}