{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/prelude",
 "title": "Prelude",
 "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": 9,
 "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": 16,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 46,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "By sunny market-place and street",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wherever I go my drum I beat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And wherever I go in my coat of red",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The ribbons flutter about my head.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I seek recruits for wars to come⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For slaughterless wars I beat the drum,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the shilling I give to each new ally",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is hope to live and courage to die.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I know that new recruits shall come",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wherever I beat the sounding drum,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till the roar of the march by country and town",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall shake the tottering Dagons down.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For I was objectless as they",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And loitering idly day by day;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But whenever I heard the recruiters come,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I left my all to follow the drum.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}