{
 "id": "t-s-eliot/animula",
 "title": "Animula",
 "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": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1929,
  "venue": "Animula (London, Faber & Faber, 1929), The Ariel Poems no. 23",
  "note": "A single-poem pamphlet of four pages, issued in the Ariel Poems series and catalogued as Gallup A14a; it is not modelled here as a volume in the poet's books. No earlier periodical printing has been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://openlibrary.org/books/OL16577701M"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/t-s-eliot_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1567",
   "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": 37,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 62,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "“Issues from the hand of God, the simple soul”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To a flat world of changing lights and noise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To light, dark, dry or damp, chilly or warm;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Retreating to the corner of arm and knee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Eager to be reassured, taking pleasure",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pleasure in the wind, the sunlight and the sea;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Studies the sunlit pattern on the floor",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And running stags around a silver tray;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Confounds the actual and the fanciful,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Content with playing-cards and kings and queens,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What the fairies do and what the servants say.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The heavy burden of the growing soul",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Perplexes and offends more, day by day;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Week by week, offends and perplexes more",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With the imperatives of “is and seems”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And may and may not, desire and control.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The pain of living and the drug of dreams",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Curl up the small soul in the window seat",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Behind the Encyclopaedia Britannica.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Issues from the hand of time the simple soul",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Irresolute and selfish, misshapen, lame,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unable to fare forward or retreat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Denying the importunity of the blood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shadow of its own shadows, spectre in its own gloom,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Living first in the silence after the viaticum.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Pray for Guiterriez, avid of speed and power,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For Boudin, blown to pieces,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For this one who made a great fortune,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that one who went his own way.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pray for Floret, by the boarhound slain between the yew trees,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}