{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/tales-of-arabia",
 "title": "Tales of Arabia",
 "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": 56,
 "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": 20,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Yes, friend, I own these tales of Arabia",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Smile not, as smiled their flawless originals,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Age-old but yet untamed, for ages",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Pass and the magic is undiminished.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thus, friend, the tales of the old Camaralzaman,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ayoub, the Slave of Love, or the Calendars,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blind-eyed and ill-starred royal scions,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Charm us in age as they charmed in childhood.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Fair ones, beyond all numerability,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beam from the palace, beam on humanity,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bright-eyed, in truth, yet soul-less houris",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Offering pleasure and only pleasure.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thus they, the venal Muses Arabian,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unlike, indeed, the nobler divinities,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Greek Gods or old time-honoured muses,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Easily proffer unloved caresses.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lost, lost, the man who mindeth the minstrelsy;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since still, in sandy, glittering pleasances,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cold, stony fruits, gem-like but quite in-",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Edible, flatter and wholly starve him.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}