{
 "id": "oscar-wilde/helas",
 "title": "Hélas!",
 "poet": "Oscar Wilde",
 "poet_slug": "oscar-wilde",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 1,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1881,
  "venue": "Poems (1881)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1057"
  ]
 },
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  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
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   "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",
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   "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,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "To drift with every passion till my soul",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is it for this that I have given away",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Scrawled over on some boyish holiday",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With idle songs for pipe and virelay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which do but mar the secret of the whole.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Surely there was a time I might have trod",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonance",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I did but touch the honey of romance⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And must I lose a soul’s inheritance?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}