{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/as-in-their-flight-the-birds-of-song",
 "title": "As in Their Flight the Birds of 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": 52,
 "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": 31,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 45,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "As in their flight the birds of song",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Halt here and there in sweet and sunny dales,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But halt not overlong;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The time one rural song to sing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They pause; then following bounteous gales",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Steer forward on the wing:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sun-servers they, from first to last,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon the sun they wait",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To ride the sailing blast.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "So he awhile in our contested state,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Awhile abode, not longer, for his Sun⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mother we say, no tenderer name we know⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With whose diviner glow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His early days had shone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now to withdraw her radiance had begun.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or lest a wrong I say, not she withdrew,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the loud stream of men day after day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And great dust columns of the common way",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Between them grew and grew:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And he and she forevermore might yearn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But to the spring the rivulets not return",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor to the bosom comes the child again.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And he (O may we fancy so!),",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He, feeling time forever flow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And flowing bear him forth and far away",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From that dear ingle where his life began",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all his treasure lay⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He, waxing into man,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And ever farther, ever closer wound",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In this obstreperous world’s ignoble round,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From that poor prospect turned his face away.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}