{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/bright-is-the-ring-of-words",
 "title": "Bright Is the Ring of Words",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Robert Louis Stevenson",
 "poet_slug": "robert-louis-stevenson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Songs of Travel and Other Verses",
 "book_slug": "songs-of-travel",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 11,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1896,
  "venue": "Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896)",
  "note": "Taken from the 1896 Chatto & Windus volume, the first separate edition. That is not the poems' first appearance: Sidney Colvin's prefatory note to this volume states that they had already been included in the Edinburgh Edition of Stevenson's works. Which printing came first, and in what year, has not been established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/songsoftraveloth00stevrich"
  ]
 },
 "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": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 34,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Bright is the ring of words",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When the right man rings them,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Fair the fall of songs",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When the singer sings them.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Still they are carolled and said⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On wings they are carried⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "After the singer is dead",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the maker buried.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Low as the singer lies",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the field of heather,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Songs of his fashion bring",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The swains together.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And when the west is red",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With the sunset embers,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The lover lingers and sings",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the maid remembers.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}