{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/a-valentines-song",
 "title": "A Valentine’s Song",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Robert Louis Stevenson",
 "poet_slug": "robert-louis-stevenson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Poems and Variant Readings",
 "book_slug": "new-poems-and-variant-readings",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 27,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1918,
  "venue": "New Poems and Variant Readings (1918)",
  "note": "Taken from the 1918 Chatto & Windus volume. That is not the first printing: this volume's own preface credits the Bibliophile Society of Boston with having first given these poems light in a privately printed edition. The year of that edition, and which poems it carried, are not established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/newpoemsandvaria00stevuoft"
  ]
 },
 "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": 64,
  "n_stanzas": 8,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 53,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Motley I count the only wear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That suits, in this mixed world, the truly wise,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Who boldly smile upon despair",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And shake their bells in Grandam Grundy’s eyes.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Singers should sing with such a goodly cheer",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That the bare listening should make strong like wine,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "At this unruly time of year,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Feast of Valentine.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "We do not now parade our “oughts”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And “shoulds” and motives and beliefs in God.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Their life lies all indoors; sad thoughts",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Must keep the house, while gay thoughts go abroad,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Within we hold the wake for hopes deceased;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But in the public streets, in wind or sun,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Keep open, at the annual feast,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The puppet-booth of fun.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Our powers, perhaps, are small to please,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But even negro-songs and castanettes,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Old jokes and hackneyed repartees",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are more than the parade of vain regrets.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Let Jacques stand Wert(h)ering by the wounded deer⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We shall make merry, honest friends of mine,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "At this unruly time of year,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Feast of Valentine.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I know how, day by weary day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hope fades, love fades, a thousand pleasures fade.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I have not trudged in vain that way",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On which life’s daylight darkens, shade by shade.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And still, with hopes decreasing, griefs increased,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still, with what wit I have shall I, for one,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Keep open, at the annual feast,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The puppet-booth of fun.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I care not if the wit be poor,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The old worn motley stained with rain and tears,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "If but the courage still endure",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That filled and strengthened hope in earlier years;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "If still, with friends averted, fate severe,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A glad, untainted cheerfulness be mine",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To greet the unruly time of year,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Feast of Valentine.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Priest, I am none of thine, and see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the perspective of still hopeful youth",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "That Truth shall triumph over thee⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Truth to one’s self⁠—I know no other truth.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I see strange days for thee and thine, O priest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And how your doctrines, fallen one by one,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall furnish at the annual feast",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The puppet-booth of fun.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Stand on your putrid ruins⁠—stand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "White neck-clothed bigot, fixedly the same,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Cruel with all things but the hand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Inquisitor in all things but the name.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Back, minister of Christ and source of fear⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We cherish freedom⁠—back with thee and thine",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "From this unruly time of year,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Feast of Valentine.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Blood thou mayest spare; but what of tears?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But what of riven households, broken faith⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Bywords that cling through all men’s years",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And drag them surely down to shame and death?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Stand back, O cruel man, O foe of youth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And let such men as hearken not thy voice",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Press freely up the road to truth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The King’s highway of choice.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}