{
 "id": "oscar-wilde/desespoir",
 "title": "Désespoir",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Oscar Wilde",
 "poet_slug": "oscar-wilde",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poetry",
 "book_slug": null,
 "book_kind": "compilation",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1913,
  "venue": "Poems, by Oscar Wilde, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol, twelfth edition (London, Methuen & Co., 1913)",
  "note": "First located printing. Robert Ross's note to this edition says that “Désespoir” and “Pan” were “recently discovered in manuscript” and are “now printed for the first time.” The same note refers back to the Uniform Edition of 1908, so whether an earlier Methuen printing already carried them has not been established, and the year is marked uncertain for that reason. Stuart Mason's 1907 bibliography, which covers Methuen's first collected edition, does not list either poem.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1057"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/oscar-wilde_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1057",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1338",
   "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lotus_Leaves",
   "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wasted_Days_(from_a_Picture_Painted_by_Miss_V._T.)",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102953450",
   "https://archive.org/details/ravennarecitedin00wildrich",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/010824214",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006061074",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100217578",
   "https://archive.org/details/cu31924013571082",
   "https://newspapers.bc.edu/?a=d&d=pilot18770721-01.2.24"
  ],
  "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": "The seasons send their ruin as they go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For in the spring the narciss shows its head",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor withers till the rose has flamed to red,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And in the autumn purple violets blow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the slim crocus stirs the winter snow;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wherefore yon leafless trees will bloom again",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And this grey land grow green with summer rain",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And send up cowslips for some boy to mow.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But what of life whose bitter hungry sea",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Flows at our heels, and gloom of sunless night",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Covers the days which never more return?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Ambition, love and all the thoughts that burn",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We lose too soon, and only find delight",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "In withered husks of some dead memory.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}