{
 "id": "oscar-wilde/on-the-sale-by-auction-of-keats-love-letters",
 "title": "On the Sale by Auction of Keats’ Love Letters",
 "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": 1886,
  "venue": "The Dramatic Review 2, no. 53 (23 January 1886), p. 249, as “Sonnet. On the Recent Sale by Auction of Keats' Love Letters”",
  "note": "Mason notes that William Sharp's Sonnets of This Century, announced as the February 1886 number of the Canterbury Poets, appears to have been issued about 25 January, two days later, and also carries the sonnet. Stuart Mason, A Bibliography of the Poems of Oscar Wilde (London, 1907), is the authority for this printing.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/abibliographypo00wildgoog"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/oscar-wilde_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
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   "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": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 47,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "These are the letters which Endymion wrote",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To one he loved in secret, and apart.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And now the brawlers of the auction mart",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The merchant’s price. I think they love not art",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Is it not said that many years ago,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a far Eastern town, some soldiers ran",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "With torches through the midnight, and began",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dice for the garments of a wretched man,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Not knowing the God’s wonder, or His woe?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}