{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/stout-marches-lead-to-certain-ends",
 "title": "Stout Marches Lead to Certain Ends",
 "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": 18,
 "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": 42,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Stout marches lead to certain ends,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We seek no Holy Grail, my friends⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That dawn should find us every day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some fraction farther on our way.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The dumb lands sleep from east to west,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They stretch and turn and take their rest.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The cock has crown in the steading-yard,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But priest and people slumber hard.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "We two are early forth, and hear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The nations snoring far and near.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So peacefully their rest they take,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It seems we are the first awake!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "—Strong heart! this is no royal way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A thousand cross-roads seek the day;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, hid from us, to left and right,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A thousand seekers seek the light.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}