{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/the-tropics-vanish-and-meseems-that-i",
 "title": "The Tropics Vanish, and Meseems That I",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Robert Louis Stevenson",
 "poet_slug": "robert-louis-stevenson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Songs of Travel and Other Verses",
 "book_slug": "songs-of-travel",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 30,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1896,
  "venue": "Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896)",
  "note": "Taken from the 1896 Chatto & Windus volume, the first separate edition. That is not the poems' first appearance: Sidney Colvin's prefatory note to this volume states that they had already been included in the Edinburgh Edition of Stevenson's works. Which printing came first, and in what year, has not been established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/songsoftraveloth00stevrich"
  ]
 },
 "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": 27,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 56,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "The tropics vanish, and meseems that I,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From Halkerside, from topmost Allermuir,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or steep Caerketton, dreaming gaze again.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Far set in fields and woods, the town I see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Spring gallant from the shallows of her smoke,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cragged, spired, and turreted, her virgin fort",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beflagged. About, on seaward-drooping hills,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "New folds of city glitter. Last, the Forth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wheels ample waters set with sacred isles,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And populous Fife smokes with a score of towns.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There, on the sunny frontage of a hill,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hard by the house of kings, repose the dead,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My dead, the ready and the strong of word.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their works, the salt-encrusted, still survive;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sea bombards their founded towers; the night",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thrills pierced with their strong lamps. The artificers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One after one, here in this grated cell,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the rain erases and the rust consumes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fell upon lasting silence. Continents",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And continental oceans intervene;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A sea uncharted, on a lampless isle,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Environs and confines their wandering child",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In vain. The voice of generations dead",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Summons me, sitting distant, to arise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My numerous footsteps nimbly to retrace,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, all mutation over, stretch me down",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In that denoted city of the dead.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}