{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/flower-god-god-of-the-spring",
 "title": "Flower God, God of the Spring",
 "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": 60,
 "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": 20,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 55,
  "max_indent": 2
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Flower god, god of the spring, beautiful, bountiful,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cold-dyed shield in the sky, lover of versicles,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Here I wander in April",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Cold, grey-headed; and still to my",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Heart, Spring comes with a bound, Spring the deliverer,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Spring, song-leader in woods, chorally resonant;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Spring, flower-planter in meadows,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Child-conductor in willowy",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Fields deep dotted with bloom, daisies and crocuses:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Here that child from his heart drinks of eternity:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O child, happy are children!",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "She still smiles on their innocence,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "She, dear mother in God, fostering violets,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fills earth full of her scents, voices and violins:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thus one cunning in music",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Wakes old chords in the memory:",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Thus fair earth in the Spring leads her performances.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One more touch of the bow, smell of the virginal",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Green⁠—one more, and my bosom",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Feels new life with an ecstasy.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ]
 ]
}