{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/men-are-heavens-piers",
 "title": "Men Are Heaven’s Piers",
 "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": 79,
 "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": 34,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 40,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Men are Heaven’s piers; they evermore",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unwearying bear the skyey floor;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Man’s theatre they bear with ease,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unfrowning caryatides!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I, for my wife, the sun uphold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or, dozing, strike the seasons cold.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She, on her side, in fairy-wise",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Deals in diviner mysteries,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By spells to make the fuel burn",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And keep the parlour warm, to turn",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Water to wine, and stones to bread,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By her unconquered hero-head.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A naked Adam, naked Eve,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Alone the primal bower we weave;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sequestered in the seas of life,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A Crusoe couple, man and wife,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With all our good, with all our will,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our unfrequented isle we fill;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And victor in day’s petty wars,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Each for the other lights the stars.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Come then, my Eve, and to and fro",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let us about our garden go;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, grateful-hearted, hand in hand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Revisit all our tillage land,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And marvel at our strange estate,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For hooded ruin at the gate",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sits watchful, and the angels fear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To see us tread so boldly here.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Meanwhile, my Eve, with flower and grass",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our perishable days we pass;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Far more the thorn observe⁠—and see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How our enormous sins go free⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor less admire, beside the rose,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How far a little virtue goes.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}