{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/de-erotio-puella",
 "title": "De Erotio Puella",
 "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": 111,
 "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": {
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  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 49,
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "This girl was sweeter than the song of swans,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And daintier than the lamb upon the lawns",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or Curine oyster. She, the flower of girls,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Outshone the light of Erythraean pearls;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The teeth of India that with polish glow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The untouched lilies or the morning snow.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her tresses did gold-dust outshine",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And fair hair of women of the Rhine.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Compared to her the peacock seemed not fair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The squirrel lively, or the phoenix rare;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her on whose pyre the smoke still hovering waits;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her whom the greedy and unequal fates",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On the sixth dawning of her natal day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My child-love and my playmate⁠—snatcht away.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}