{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/the-lesson-of-the-master",
 "title": "The Lesson of the Master",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": "To Henry James",
 "poet": "Robert Louis Stevenson",
 "poet_slug": "robert-louis-stevenson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Volume Fourteen",
 "book_slug": "works-swanston-edition-volume-14",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 9,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1911,
  "venue": "The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Volume Fourteen (1911)",
  "note": "Taken from the 'Additional Poems' at the end of volume XIV of the Swanston Edition, a collected edition. That is the printing this text comes from, not the poem's first appearance, and which earlier book or magazine printed it first has not been established here. The year itself is disputed: the Archive.org catalogue record cited for this volume gives 1911, while the volume's own title page reads MDCCCCXII, that is 1912.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/worksofrobertlou14stev"
  ]
 },
 "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": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 52,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Adela, Adela, Adela Chart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What have you done to my elderly heart?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of all the ladies of paper and ink",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I count you the paragon, call you the pink.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The word of your brother depicts you in part:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“You raving maniac!” Adela Chart;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But in all the asylums that cumber the ground,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So delightful a maniac was ne’er to be found.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I pore on you, dote on you, clasp you to heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I laud, love, and laugh at you, Adela Chart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And thank my dear maker the while I admire",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I can be neither your husband nor sire.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your husband’s, your sire’s, were a difficult part;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You’re a byway to suicide, Adela Chart;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But to read of, depicted by exquisite James,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O, sure you’re the flower and quintessence of dames.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}