{
 "id": "matthew-arnold/self-deception",
 "title": "Self-Deception",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Matthew Arnold",
 "poet_slug": "matthew-arnold",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems",
 "book_slug": "empedocles-on-etna",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 7,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1852,
  "venue": "Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems (1852)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/empedoclesonetna00arno"
  ]
 },
 "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": "2026-08-19"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 28,
  "n_stanzas": 7,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 52,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Say, what blinds us, that we claim the glory",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of possessing powers not our share?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since man woke on earth, he knows his story,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But, before we woke on earth, we were.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Long, long since, undower’d yet, our spirit",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Roam’d, ere birth, the treasuries of God:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Saw the gifts, the powers it might inherit;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ask’d an outfit for its earthly road.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Then, as now, this tremulous, eager Being",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Strain’d, and long’d, and grasp’d each gift it saw.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then, as now, a Power beyond our seeing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stav’d us back, and gave our choice the law.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ah, whose hand that day through heaven guided",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Man’s blank spirit, since it was not we?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ah, who sway’d our choice, and who decided",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What our gifts, and what our wants should be?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For, alas! he left us each retaining",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Shreds of gifts which he refus’d in full.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still these waste us with their hopeless straining⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still the attempt to use them proves them null.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And on earth we wander, groping, reeling;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Powers stir in us, stir and disappear.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ah, and he, who placed our master-feeling,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fail’d to place our master-feeling clear.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "We but dream we have our wish’d-for powers.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Ends we seek we never shall attain.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ah, some power exists there, which is ours?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some end is there, we indeed may gain?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ],
 "notes": [
  {
   "id": "neighbouring-title-not-a-weld",
   "kind": "defect",
   "raised": "2026-08-19",
   "what": "defects.py sections flags this record on DESPONDENCY and SELF-DECEPTION from the 1897 Crowell Poetical Works. Despondency is already its own record (matthew-arnold/despondency, 8 lines). This record is the 28 lines of Self-Deception. Gutenberg 27739 contents list them as consecutive lyric poems, not as sections of one.",
   "consequence": "Left as one poem. The flag list is not the split list.",
   "to_settle": "Nothing on the verse.",
   "checked_against": [
    "https://archive.org/details/poeticalworksofm00arn",
    "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27739"
   ]
  }
 ]
}