{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/the-relic-taken-what-avails-the-shrine",
 "title": "The Relic Taken, What Avails the Shrine?",
 "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": 11,
 "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": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 46,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "The relic taken, what avails the shrine?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The locket, pictureless? O heart of mine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Art thou not worse than that,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still warm, a vacant nest where love once sat?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Her image nestled closer at my heart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than cherished memories, healed every smart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And warmed it more than wine",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or the full summer sun in noonday shine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "This was the little weather gleam that lit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The cloudy promontories⁠—the real charm was",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That gilded hills and woods",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And walked beside me thro’ the solitudes.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The sun is set. My heart is widowed now",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of that companion-thought. Alone I plough",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The seas of life, and trace",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A separate furrow far from her and grace.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}