{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/behold-as-goblins-dark-of-mien",
 "title": "Behold, as Goblins Dark of Mien",
 "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": 57,
 "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": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 6,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 37,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Behold, as goblins dark of mien",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And portly tyrants dyed with crime",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Change, in the transformation scene,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At Christmas, in the pantomime,",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Instanter, at the prompter’s cough,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The fairy bonnets them, and they",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Throw their abhorred carbuncles off",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And blossom like the flowers in May.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "—So mankind, to angelic eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So, through the scenes of life below,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "In life’s ironical disguise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A travesty of man, ye go:",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But fear not: ere the curtain fall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Death in the transformation scene",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Steps forward from her pedestal,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Apparent, as the fairy Queen;",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And coming, frees you in a trice",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From all your lendings⁠—lust of fame,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Ungainly virtue, ugly vice,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Terror and tyranny and shame.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "So each, at last himself, for good",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In that dear country lays him down,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "At last beloved and understood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And pure in feature and renown.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}