[
  {
    "title": "Apparent Failure",
    "author": "Robert Browning",
    "lines": [
      "No, for I'll save it! Seven years since",
      "  I passed through Paris, stopped a day",
      "To see the baptism of your Prince,",
      "  Saw, made my bow, and went my way:",
      "Walking the heat and headache off,",
      "  I took the Seine-side, you surmise,",
      "Thought of the Congress, Gortschakoff,",
      "  Cavour's appeal and Buol's replies,",
      "  So sauntered till--what met my eyes?",
      "",
      "Only the Doric little Morgue!",
      "  The dead-house where you show your drowned:",
      "Petrarch's Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue,",
      "  Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned.",
      "One pays one's debt in such a case;",
      "  I plucked up heart and entered,--stalked,",
      "Keeping a tolerable face",
      "  Compared with some whose cheeks were chalked:",
      "  Let them! No Briton's to be balked!",
      "",
      "First came the silent gazers; next,",
      "  A screen of glass, we're thankful for;",
      "Last, the sight's self, the sermon's text,",
      "  The three men who did most abhor",
      "Their life in Paris yesterday,",
      "  So killed themselves: and now, enthroned",
      "Each on his copper couch, they lay",
      "  Fronting me, waiting to be owned.",
      "  I thought, and think, their sin's atoned.",
      "",
      "Poor men, God made, and all for that!",
      "  The reverence struck me; o'er each head",
      "Religiously was hung its hat,",
      "  Each coat dripped by the owner's bed,",
      "Sacred from touch: each had his berth,",
      "  His bounds, his proper place of rest,",
      "Who last night tenanted on earth",
      "  Some arch, where twelve such slept abreast,--",
      "  Unless the plain asphalt seemed best.",
      "",
      "How did it happen, my poor boy?",
      "  You wanted to be Buonaparte",
      "And have the Tuileries for toy,",
      " And could not, so it broke your heart?",
      "You, old one by his side, I judge,",
      "  Were, red as blood, a socialist,",
      "A leveller! Does the Empire grudge",
      "  You've gained what no Republic missed?",
      "  Be quiet, and unclench your fist!",
      "",
      "And this--why, he was red in vain,",
      "  Or black,--poor fellow that is blue!",
      "What fancy was it, turned your brain?",
      "  Oh, women were the prize for you!",
      "Money gets women, cards and dice",
      "  Get money, and ill-luck gets just",
      "The copper couch and one clear nice",
      "  Cool squirt of water o'er your bust,",
      "  The right thing to extinguish lust!",
      "",
      "It's wiser being good than bad;",
      "  It's safer being meek than fierce:",
      "It's fitter being sane than mad.",
      "  My own hope is, a sun will pierce",
      "The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;",
      "  That, after Last, returns the First,",
      "Tho' a wide compass round be fetched;",
      "  That what began best, can't end worst,",
      "  Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst."
    ],
    "linecount": "63"
  }
]