{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/if-i-could-arise-and-travel-away",
 "title": "If I Could Arise and Travel Away",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Robert Louis Stevenson",
 "poet_slug": "robert-louis-stevenson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson (Hitherto Unpublished)",
 "book_slug": "poems-hitherto-unpublished",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 32,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1921,
  "venue": "Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson (Hitherto Unpublished) (1921)",
  "note": "The volume's title page states that these poems were hitherto unpublished, and no earlier printing of them has been established. The 1921 date is the year of first printing, but not necessarily of this exact copy: the volume states that it is a complimentary edition struck from the same type forms as the Bibliophile Society's edition of the same year.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poemshithertounp00stevrich"
  ]
 },
 "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": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "If I could arise and travel away",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Over the plains of the night and the day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I should arrive at a land at last",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where all of our sins and sorrows are past",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And we’re done with the Ten Commandments.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The name of the land I must not tell;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Green is the grass and cool the well:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Virtue is easy to find and to keep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the sinner may lie at his pleasure and sleep",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By the side of the Ten Commandments.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Income and honor, and glory and gold",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grow on the bushes all over the wold;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And if ever a man has a touch of remorse,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He eats of the flower of the golden gorse,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to hell with the Ten Commandments.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "He goes to church in his Sunday’s best;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He eats and drinks with perfect zest;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And whether he lives in heaven or hell",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is more than you or I can tell;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But he’s done with the Ten Commandments.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}