{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/ad-piscatorem",
 "title": "Ad Piscatorem",
 "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": 112,
 "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": 16,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 50,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "For these are sacred fishes all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who know that lord that is the lord of all;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Come to the brim and nose the friendly hand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That sways and can beshadow all the land.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor only so, but have their names, and come",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When they are summoned by the Lord of Rome.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Here once his line an impious Lybian threw;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And as with tremulous reed his prey he drew,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Straight, the light failed him.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He groped, nor found the prey that he had ta’en.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now as a warning to the fisher clan",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beside the lake he sits, a beggarman.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou, then, while still thine innocence is pure,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Flee swiftly, nor presume to set thy lure;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Respect these fishes, for their friends are great;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in the waters empty all thy bait.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}