{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/now-bare-to-the-beholders-eye",
 "title": "Now Bare to the Beholder’s Eye",
 "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": 97,
 "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": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 39,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Now bare to the beholder’s eye",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your late denuded bindings lie,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Subsiding slowly where they fell,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A disinvested citadel;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The obdurate corset, Cupid’s foe,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Dutchman’s breeches frilled below.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Those that the lover notes to note,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And white and crackling petticoat.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "From these, that on the ground repose,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their lady lately re-arose;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And laying by the lady’s name,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A living woman re-became.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of her, that from the public eye",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They do enclose and fortify,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now, lying scattered as they fell,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "An indiscreeter tale they tell:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of that more soft and secret her",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose daylong fortresses they were,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By fading warmth, by lingering print,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These now discarded scabbards hint.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "A twofold change the ladies know:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "First, in the morn the bugles blow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And they, with floral hues and scents,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Man their beribboned battlements.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But let the stars appear, and they",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shed inhumanities away;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And from the changeling fashion see,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through comic and through sweet degree,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In nature’s toilet unsurpassed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Forth leaps the laughing girl at last.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}