{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/a-portrait",
 "title": "A Portrait",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Robert Louis Stevenson",
 "poet_slug": "robert-louis-stevenson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Underwoods",
 "book_slug": "underwoods",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 30,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1887,
  "venue": "Underwoods (1887)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/underwoods00stevrich"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/robert-louis-stevenson_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://archive.org/details/worksofrobertlvol28stev",
   "https://archive.org/details/worksofrobertlou14stev",
   "https://archive.org/details/newpoemsandvaria00stevuoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemshithertounp00stevrich",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31291",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30659",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/441",
   "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems,_by_Robert_Louis_Stevenson,_hitherto_unpublished"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 20,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 40,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I am a kind of farthing dip,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unfriendly to the nose and eyes;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "A blue-behinded ape, I skip",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon the trees of Paradise.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "At mankind’s feast, I take my place",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In solemn, sanctimonious state,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And have the air of saying grace",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While I defile the dinner-plate.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I am “the smiler with the knife,”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The battener upon garbage, I⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Dear Heaven, with such a rancid life",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were it not better far to die?",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yet still, about the human pale,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I love to scamper, love to race,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To swing by my irreverent tail",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All over the most holy place;",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And when at length, some golden day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The unfailing sportsman, aiming at,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall bag, me⁠—all the world shall say:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Thank God, and there’s an end of that!”",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}