{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/music-at-the-villa-marina",
 "title": "Music at the Villa Marina",
 "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": 30,
 "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": 28,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 52,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "For some abiding central source of power,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strong-smitten steady chords, ye seem to flow",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And, flowing, carry virtue. Far below,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The vain tumultuous passions of the hour",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fleet fast and disappear; and as the sun",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shines on the wake of tempests, there is cast",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "O’er all the shattered ruins of my past",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "A strong contentment as of battles won.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And yet I cry in anguish, as I hear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The long drawn pageant of your passage roll",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Magnificently forth into the night.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To yon fair land ye come from, to yon sphere",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of strength and love where now ye shape your flight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O even wings of music, bear my soul!",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ye have the power, if but ye had the will,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strong-smitten steady chords in sequence grand,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To bear me forth into that tranquil land",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Where good is no more ravelled up with ill;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where she and I, remote upon some hill",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or by some quiet river’s windless strand,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "May live, and love, and wander hand in hand,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And follow nature simply, and be still.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "From this grim world, where, sadly, prisoned, we",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sit bound with others’ heart-strings as with chains,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And, if one moves, all suffer⁠—to that Goal,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "If such a land, if such a sphere, there be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thither, from life and all life’s joys and pains,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "O even wings of music, bear my soul!",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}