{
 "id": "t-s-eliot/a-lyric",
 "title": "A Lyric",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "T. S. Eliot",
 "poet_slug": "t-s-eliot",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poetry",
 "book_slug": null,
 "book_kind": "compilation",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": "Juvenilia",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1905,
  "venue": "The Smith Academy Record, vol. 8, no. 4 (April 1905), untitled",
  "note": "Cited from John Hayward's Poems Written in Early Youth (1967) and Donald Gallup's T. S. Eliot: A Bibliography (revised edition, 1969). Hayward prints the Smith Academy text as “[A Lyric]”, first line “If Time and Space, as Sages say”; a variant appeared in The Harvard Advocate of 3 June 1907 (vol. 83, no. 7) as “Song”, first line “If space and time, as sages say”. The text carried here opens in the later form, so which of the two printings it follows is not settled. The manuscript, dated 24 January 1905, is at King's College, Cambridge.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://theworld.com/~raparker/exploring/tseliot/works/poems/eliot-harvard-poems.html"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
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  "repo": "standardebooks/t-s-eliot_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
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   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009592742",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1321",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001835100",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100218549",
   "https://archive.org/details/poems19091925030616mbp",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedpoems1900elio",
   "https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20200705",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemswritteninea00elio",
   "https://theworld.com/~raparker/exploring/tseliot/works/poems/eliot-harvard-poems.html"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 16,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 37,
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 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "If space and time, as sages say,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are things that cannot be,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The fly that lives a single day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Has lived as long as we.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But let us live while yet we may,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While love and life are free,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "For time is time, and runs away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though sages disagree.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The flowers I sent thee when the dew",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was trembling on the vine",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Were withered ere the wild bee flew",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To suck the eglantine.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But let us haste to pluck anew",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor mourn to see them pine,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And though the flowers of life be few",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet let them be divine.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}