{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/go-little-book-the-ancient-phrase",
 "title": "Go, Little Book⁠—The Ancient Phrase",
 "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": 69,
 "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": 36,
  "n_stanzas": 6,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 43,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Go, little book⁠—the ancient phrase",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And still the daintiest⁠—go your ways,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My Otto, over sea and land,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till you shall come to Nelly’s hand.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "How shall I your Nelly know?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By her blue eyes and her black brow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By her fierce and slender look,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And by her goodness, little book!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What shall I say when I come there?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You shall speak her soft and fair:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "See⁠—you shall say⁠—the love they send",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To greet their unforgotten friend!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Giant Adulpho you shall sing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The next, and then the cradled king:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the four corners of the roof",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then kindly bless; and to your perch aloof,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where Balzac all in yellow dressed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the dear Webster of the west",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Encircle the prepotent throne",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of Shakespeare and of Calderon,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall climb an upstart.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There with these",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You shall give ear to breaking seas",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And windmills turning in the breeze,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A distant undetermined din",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Without; and you shall hear within",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The blazing and the bickering logs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The crowing child, the yawning dogs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And ever agile, high and low,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our Nelly going to and fro.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There shall you all silent sit,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till, when perchance the lamp is lit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the day’s labour done, she takes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Poor Otto down, and, warming for our sakes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Perchance beholds, alive and near,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our distant faces reappear.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}