{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/epistle-to-albert-dew-smith",
 "title": "Epistle to Albert Dew-Smith",
 "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": 3,
 "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": 64,
  "n_stanzas": 16,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 40,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Figure me to yourself, I pray⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A man of my peculiar cut⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Apart from dancing and deray,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into an Alpine valley shut;",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Shut in a kind of damned Hotel,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Discountenanced by God and man;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The food?⁠—Sir, you would do as well",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To cram your belly full of bran.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The company? Alas, the day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I should dwell with such a crew,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "With devil anything to say,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor any one to say it to!",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The place? Although they call it Platz,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I will be bold and state my view;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "It’s not a place at all⁠—and that’s",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The bottom verity, my Dew.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There are, as I will not deny,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Innumerable inns; a road;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Several Alps indifferent high;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The snow’s inviolable abode;",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Eleven English parsons, all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Entirely inoffensive; four",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "True human beings⁠—what I call",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Human⁠—the deuce a cipher more;",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "A climate of surprising worth;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Innumerable dogs that bark;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Some air, some weather, and some earth;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A native race⁠—God save the mark!⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "A race that works, yet cannot work,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yodels, but cannot yodel right,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Such as, unhelp’d, with rusty dirk,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I vow that I could wholly smite.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "A river that from morn to night",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Down all the valley plays the fool;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Not once she pauses in her flight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor knows the comfort of a pool;",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But still keeps up, by straight or bend,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The selfsame pace she hath begun⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Still hurry, hurry, to the end⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Good God, is that the way to run?",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If I a river were, I hope",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I should better realise",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The opportunities and scope",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of that romantic enterprise.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I should not ape the merely strange,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But aim besides at the divine;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And continuity and change",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I still should labour to combine.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Here should I gallop down the race,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Here charge the sterling like a bull;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "There, as a man might wipe his face,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lie, pleased and panting, in a pool.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But what, my Dew, in idle mood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What prate I, minding not my debt?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "What do I talk of bad or good?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The best is still a cigarette.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Me whether evil fate assault,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or smiling providences crown⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Whether on high the eternal vault",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be blue, or crash with thunder down⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I judge the best, whate’er befall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is still to sit on one’s behind,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And, having duly moistened all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Smoke with an unperturbed mind.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}