{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/let-love-go-if-go-she-will",
 "title": "Let Love Go, if Go She Will",
 "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": 32,
 "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": 25,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 2
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Let love go, if go she will.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Seek not, O fool, her wanton flight to stay.",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Of all she gives and takes away",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "The best remains behind her still.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The best remains behind; in vain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Joy she may give and take again,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Joy she may take and leave us pain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If yet she leave behind",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "The constant mind",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "To meet all fortunes nobly, to endure",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All things with a good heart, and still be pure,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still to be foremost in the foremost cause,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And still be worthy of the love that was.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love coming is omnipotent indeed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But not Love going. Let her go. The seed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Springs in the favouring Summer air, and grows,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And waxes strong; and when the Summer goes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Remains, a perfect tree.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Joy she may give and take again,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Joy she may take and leave us pain.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O Love, and what care we?",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "For one thing thou hast given, O Love, one thing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is ours that nothing can remove;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "And as the King discrowned is still a King,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The unhappy lover still preserves his love.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ]
 ]
}