Light as the linnet on my way I start, For all my pack I bear a chartered heart. Forth on the world without a guide or chart, Content to know, through all man’s varying fates, The eternal woman by the wayside waits.
Where this text comes from
First published in New Poems and Variant Readings (1918). This date is uncertain. 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. [1]
Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.
Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/robert-louis-stevenson_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).
Earlier sources (8)
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Cite this poem
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894).
“Light as the Linnet on My Way I Start.” First published in New Poems and Variant Readings (1918).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/robert-louis-stevenson/light-as-the-linnet-on-my-way-i-start/.
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