{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/the-precarious-mill",
 "title": "The Precarious Mill",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Robert Louis Stevenson",
 "poet_slug": "robert-louis-stevenson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Appendix",
 "book_slug": "works-edinburgh-edition-appendix",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 11,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1898,
  "venue": "The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Appendix (1898)",
  "note": "Taken from the 1898 Appendix volume of the Edinburgh Edition. For most of these verses that is not the first printing: the volume reproduces in facsimile the Davos Press cuts and rhymes that Stevenson wrote and engraved between the autumn of 1880 and the summer of 1882 and that his stepson Lloyd Osbourne printed at the time. The volume's own bibliographical note states that only the two Moral Tales, 'Robin and Ben' and 'The Builder's Doom', are printed here for the first time. Which Davos booklet printed a given rhyme, and in what year, is not established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/worksofrobertlvol28stev"
  ]
 },
 "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": 6,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 37,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Alone above the stream it stands,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Above the iron hill,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The topsy-turvy, tumble-down,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet habitable mill.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Still as the ringing saws advance",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To slice the humming deal,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All day the pallid miller hears",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The thunder of the wheel.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "He hears the river plunge and roar",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As roars the angry mob;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He feels the solid building quake,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The trusty timbers throb.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "All night beside the fire he cowers:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He hears the rafters jar:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O why is he not in a proper house",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As decent people are!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The floors are all aslant, he sees,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The doors are all a-jam;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And from the hook above his head",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All crooked swings the ham.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“Alas,” he cries and shakes his head,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“I see by every sign,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There soon will be the deuce to pay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With this estate of mine.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}