{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/the-piper",
 "title": "The Piper",
 "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": 53,
 "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": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 66,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Again I hear you piping, for I know the tune so well⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You rouse the heart to wander and be free,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Though where you learned your music, not the God of song can tell,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For you pipe the open highway and the sea.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "O piper, lightly footing, lightly piping on your way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though your music thrills and pierces far and near,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I tell you you had better pipe to someone else today,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For you cannot pipe my fancy from my dear.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "You sound the note of travel through the hamlet and the town;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You would lure the holy angels from on high;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And not a man can hear you, but he throws the hammer down",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And is off to see the countries ere he die.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But now no more I wander, now unchanging here I stay;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By my love, you find me safely sitting here:",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And pipe you ne’er so sweetly, till you pipe the hills away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You can never pipe my fancy from my dear.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}