{
 "id": "matthew-arnold/worldly-place",
 "title": "Worldly Place",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Matthew Arnold",
 "poet_slug": "matthew-arnold",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Poems",
 "book_slug": "new-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 8,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1867,
  "venue": "New Poems (1867)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/newpoems00arno"
  ]
 },
 "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": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Even in a palace, life may be led well!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So spake the imperial sage, purest of men,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Marcus Aurelius.⁠—But the stifling den",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell,",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Our freedom for a little bread we sell,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And drudge under some foolish master’s ken,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who rates us, if we peer outside our pen⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Match’d with a palace, is not this a hell?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Even in a palace! On his truth sincere,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who spoke these words, no shadow ever came;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And when my ill-school’d spirit is aflame",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’ll stop, and say: “There were no succour here!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The aids to noble life are all within.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}