{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/swallows-travel-to-and-fro",
 "title": "Swallows Travel to and Fro",
 "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": 29,
 "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": 39,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Swallows travel to and fro,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the great winds come and go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the steady breezes blow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bearing perfume, bearing love.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Breezes hasten, swallows fly,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Towered clouds forever ply,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And at noonday, you and I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "See the same sunshine above.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Dew and rain fall everywhere,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Harvests ripen, flowers are fair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the whole round earth is bare",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the moonshine and the sun;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And the live air, fanned with wings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bright with breeze and sunshine, brings",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into contact distant things,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And makes all the countries one.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Let us wander where we will,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Something kindred greets us still;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Something seen on vale or hill",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Falls familiar on the heart;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "So, at scent or sound or sight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Severed souls by day and night",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tremble with the same delight⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tremble, half the world apart.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}