{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/ne-sit-ancill-tibi-amor-pudor",
 "title": "Ne Sit Ancillæ Tibi Amor Pudor",
 "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": null,
 "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": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 40,
  "max_indent": 2
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "There’s just a twinkle in your eye",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That seems to say I might, if I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were only bold enough to try",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "An arm about your waist.",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "I hear, too, as you come and go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That pretty nervous laugh, you know;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then your cap is always so",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Coquettishly displaced.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Your cap! the word’s profanely said.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That little top-knot, white and red,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That quaintly crowns your graceful head,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No bigger than a flower,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Is set with such a witching art,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is so provocatively smart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’d like to wear it on my heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "An order for an hour!",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O graceful housemaid, tall and fair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I love your shy imperial air,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And always loiter on the stair",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When you are going by.",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "A strict reserve the fates demand;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But, when to let you pass I stand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sometimes by chance I touch your hand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And sometimes catch your eye.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ]
 ]
}