{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/hail-childish-slaves-of-social-rules",
 "title": "Hail! Childish Slaves of Social Rules",
 "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": 28,
 "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": 56,
  "n_stanzas": 7,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 44,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Hail! Childish slaves of social rules",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You had yourselves a hand in making!",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "How I could shake your faith, ye fools,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If but I thought it worth the shaking.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I see, and pity you; and then",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Go, casting off the idle pity,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "In search of better, braver men,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My own way freely through the city.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My own way freely, and not yours;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, careless of a town’s abusing,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Seek real friendship that endures",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Among the friends of my own choosing.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I’ll choose my friends myself, do you hear?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And won’t let Mrs. Grundy do it,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Though all I honour and hold dear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all I hope should move me to it.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I take my old coat from the shelf⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am a man of little breeding.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And only dress to please myself⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I own, a very strange proceeding.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I smoke a pipe abroad, because",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To all cigars I much prefer it,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And as I scorn your social laws",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My choice has nothing to deter it.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Gladly I trudge the footpath way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While you and yours roll by in coaches",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "In all the pride of fine array,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through all the city’s thronged approaches.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "O fine religious, decent folk,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In Virtue’s flaunting gold and scarlet,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I sneer between two puffs of smoke⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Give me the publican and harlot.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ye dainty-spoken, stiff, severe",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Seed of the migrated Philistian,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "One whispered question in your ear⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pray, what was Christ, if you be Christian?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "If Christ were only here just now,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Among the city’s wynds and gables",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Teaching the life he taught us, how",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would he be welcome to your tables?",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I go and leave your logic-straws,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your former-friends with face averted,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Your petty ways and narrow laws,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your Grundy and your God, deserted.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "From your frail ark of lies, I flee",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I know not where, like Noah’s raven.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Full to the broad, unsounded sea",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I swim from your dishonest haven.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Alone on that unsounded deep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Poor waif, it may be I shall perish,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Far from the course I thought to keep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Far from the friends I hoped to cherish.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "It may be that I shall sink, and yet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hear, thro’ all taunt and scornful laughter,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Through all defeat and all regret,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The stronger swimmers coming after.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}