{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/i-now-o-friend-whom-noiselessly-the-snows",
 "title": "I Now, O Friend, Whom Noiselessly the Snows",
 "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": 87,
 "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": 75,
  "n_stanzas": 9,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 58,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I now, O friend, whom noiselessly the snows",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Settle around, and whose small chamber grows",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dusk as the sloping window takes its load:",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The kindly hill, as to complete our hap,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Has ta’en us in the shelter of her lap;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Well sheltered in our slender grove of trees",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And ring of walls, we sit between her knees;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A disused quarry, paved with rose plots, hung",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With clematis, the barren womb whence sprung",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The crow-stepped house itself, that now far seen",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stands, like a bather, to the neck in green.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A disused quarry, furnished with a seat",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sacred to pipes and meditation meet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For such a sunny and retired nook.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There in the clear, warm mornings many a book",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Has vied with the fair prospect of the hills",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That, vale on vale, rough brae on brae, upfills",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Halfway to the zenith all the vacant sky",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To keep my loose attention.⁠ ⁠…",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Horace has sat with me whole mornings through:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Montaigne gossiped, fairly false and true;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And chattering Pepys, and a few beside",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That suit the easy vein, the quiet tide,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The calm and certain stay of garden-life,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Far sunk from all the thunderous roar of strife.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There is about the small secluded place",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A garnish of old times; a certain grace",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of pensive memories lays about the braes:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The old chestnuts gossip tales of bygone days.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Here, where some wandering preacher, blest Lazil,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Perhaps, or Peden, on the middle hill",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had made his secret church, in rain or snow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He cheers the chosen residue from woe.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All night the doors stood open, come who might,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The hounded kebbock mat the mud all night.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor are there wanting later tales; of how",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Prince Charlie’s Highlanders⁠ ⁠…",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I have had talents, too. In life’s first hour",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God crowned with benefits my childish head.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Flower after flower, I plucked them; flower by flower",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cast them behind me, ruined, withered, dead.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Full many a shining godhead disappeared.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the bright rank that once adorned her brow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The old child’s Olympus",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Gone are the fair old dreams, and one by one,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As, one by one, the means to reach them went,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As, one by one, the stars in riot and disgrace,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I squandered what⁠ ⁠…",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There shut the door, alas! on many a hope",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Too many;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My face is set to the autumnal slope,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the loud winds shall⁠ ⁠…",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There shut the door, alas! on many a hope,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And yet some hopes remain that shall decide",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My rest of years and down the autumnal slope.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Gone are the quiet twilight dreams that I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Loved, as all men have loved them; gone!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I have great dreams, and still they stir my soul on high⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dreams of the knight’s stout heart and tempered will.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not in Elysian lands they take their way;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not as of yore across the gay champaign,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Towards some dream city, towered⁠ ⁠… and my⁠ ⁠…",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The path winds forth before me, sweet and plain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not now; but though beneath a stone-grey sky",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "November’s russet woodlands toss and wail,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still the white road goes thro’ them, still may I,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strong in new purpose, God, may still prevail.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I and my like, improvident sailors!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "At whose light fall awaking, all my heart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grew populous with gracious, favoured thought,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all night long thereafter, hour by hour,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The pageant of dead love before my eyes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Went proudly, and old hopes with downcast head",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Followed like Kings, subdued in Rome’s imperial hour,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Followed the car; and I⁠ ⁠…",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}