{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/alcaics-to-horatio-f-brown",
 "title": "Alcaics to Horatio F. Brown",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Robert Louis Stevenson",
 "poet_slug": "robert-louis-stevenson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Volume Fourteen",
 "book_slug": "works-swanston-edition-volume-14",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 4,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1911,
  "venue": "The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Volume Fourteen (1911)",
  "note": "Taken from the 'Additional Poems' at the end of volume XIV of the Swanston Edition, a collected edition. That is the printing this text comes from, not the poem's first appearance, and which earlier book or magazine printed it first has not been established here. The year itself is disputed: the Archive.org catalogue record cited for this volume gives 1911, while the volume's own title page reads MDCCCCXII, that is 1912.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/worksofrobertlou14stev"
  ]
 },
 "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": 28,
  "n_stanzas": 7,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 47,
  "max_indent": 2
 },
 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Brave lads in olden musical centuries,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sang, night by night, adorable choruses,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sat late by alehouse doors in April",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Chaunting in joy as the moon was rising:",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Moon-seen and merry, under the trellises,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Flush-faced they played with old polysyllables;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Spring scents inspired, old wine diluted;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Love and Apollo were there to chorus.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Now these, the songs, remain to eternity,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Those, only those, the bountiful choristers",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gone⁠—those are gone, those unremembered",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Sleep and are silent in earth forever.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "So man himself appears and evanishes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So smiles and goes; as wanderers halting at",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some green-embowered house, play their music,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Play and are gone on the windy highway;",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yet dwells the strain enshrined in the memory",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Long after they departed eternally,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Forth-faring tow’rd far mountain summits,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Cities of men on the sounding Ocean.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Youth sang the song in years immemorial;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Brave chanticleer, he sang and was beautiful;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bird-haunted, green tree-tops in springtime",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Heard and were pleased by the voice of singing;",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Youth goes, and leaves behind him a prodigy⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Songs sent by thee afar from Venetian",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sea-grey lagoons, sea-paven highways,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Dear to me here in my Alpine exile.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ]
 ]
}