{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/if-this-were-faith",
 "title": "If This Were Faith",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Robert Louis Stevenson",
 "poet_slug": "robert-louis-stevenson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Songs of Travel and Other Verses",
 "book_slug": "songs-of-travel",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 22,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1896,
  "venue": "Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896)",
  "note": "Taken from the 1896 Chatto & Windus volume, the first separate edition. That is not the poems' first appearance: Sidney Colvin's prefatory note to this volume states that they had already been included in the Edinburgh Edition of Stevenson's works. Which printing came first, and in what year, has not been established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/songsoftraveloth00stevrich"
  ]
 },
 "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": 37,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 71,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "God, if this were enough,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I see things bare to the buff",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And up to the buttocks in mire;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I ask nor hope nor hire,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nut in the husk,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor dawn beyond the dusk,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor life beyond death:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God, if this were faith?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Having felt Thy wind in my face",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Spit sorrow and disgrace,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Having seen Thine evil doom",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In Golgotha and Khartoum,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the brutes, the work of Thine hands,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fill with injustice lands",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And stain with blood the sea:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If still in my veins the glee",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the black night and the sun",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the lost battle, run:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If, an adept,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The iniquitous lists I still accept",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And still to battle and perish for a dream of good:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God, if that were enough?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If to feel in the ink of the slough,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the sink of the mire,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Veins of glory and fire",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Run through and transpierce and transpire,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And a secret purpose of glory in every part,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the answering glory of battle fill my heart;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To thrill with the joy of girded men,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To go on forever and fail and go on again,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And be mauled to the earth and arise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen with the eyes:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That somehow the right is the right",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the smooth shall bloom from the rough:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lord, if that were enough?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}