{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/man-sails-the-deep-awhile",
 "title": "Man Sails the Deep Awhile",
 "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": 45,
 "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": 30,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 3
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Man sails the deep awhile;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Loud runs the roaring tide;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "The seas are wild and wide;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "O’er many a salt, o’er many a desert mile,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The unchained breakers ride,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "The quivering stars beguile.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Hope bears the sole command;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hope, with unshaken eyes,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Sees flaw and storm arise;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Hope, the good steersman, with unwearying hand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Steers, under changing skies,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Unchanged toward the land.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O wind that bravely blows!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O hope that sails with all",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Where stars and voices call!",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "O ship undaunted that forever goes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where God, her admiral,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "His battle signal shows!",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What though the seas and wind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Far on the deep should whelm",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Colours and sails and helm?",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "There, too, you touch that port that you designed⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There, in the mid-seas’ realm,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall you that haven find.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Well hast thou sailed: now die,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To die is not to sleep.",
    "indent": 3
   },
   {
    "text": "Still your true course you keep,",
    "indent": 3
   },
   {
    "text": "O sailor soul, still sailing for the sky;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And fifty fathom deep",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Your colours still shall fly.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ]
 ]
}