{
 "id": "phillis-wheatley/to-a-gentleman-on-his-voyage-to-great-britain-for-the-recovery-of-his-",
 "title": "To a Gentleman on His Voyage to Great-Britain for the Recovery of His Health",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Phillis Wheatley",
 "poet_slug": "phillis-wheatley",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral",
 "book_slug": "poems-on-various-subjects-religious-and-moral",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 29,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1773,
  "venue": "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://github.com/standardebooks/phillis-wheatley_poems-on-various-subjects-religious-and-moral"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/phillis-wheatley_poems-on-various-subjects-religious-and-moral",
  "file": "poems-on-various-subjects-religious-and-moral.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/409",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsonvarioussu273whea",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofphilliswh00whea_1"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-14"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 32,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 54,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "While others chant of gay Elysian scenes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of balmy zephyrs, and of flow’ry plains,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My song more happy speaks a greater name,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Feels higher motives and a nobler flame.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For thee, O R⁠⸺, the muse attunes her strings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And mounts sublime above inferior things.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I sing not now of green embow’ring woods,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I sing not now the daughters of the floods,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I sing not of the storms o’er ocean driv’n,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And how they howl’d along the waste of heav’n,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I to R⁠⸺ would paint the British shore,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And vast Atlantic, not untry’d before:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy life impair’d commands thee to arise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leave these bleak regions, and inclement skies,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where chilling winds return the winter past,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And nature shudders at the furious blast.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O thou stupendous, earth-enclosing main",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Exert thy wonders to the world again!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If ere thy pow’r prolong’d the fleeting breath,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Turn’d back the shafts, and mock’d the gates of death,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If ere thine air dispens’d an healing pow’r,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or snatch’d the victim from the fatal hour,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This equal case demands thine equal care,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And equal wonders may this patient share.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But unavailing, frantic is the dream",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To hope thine aid without the aid of him",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who gave thee birth and taught thee where to flow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in thy waves his various blessings show.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "May R⁠⸺ return to view his native shore",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Replete with vigour not his own before,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then shall we see with pleasure and surprise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And own thy work, great Ruler of the skies!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}