{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/to-dr-hake",
 "title": "To Dr. Hake",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": "(On Receiving a Copy of Verses)",
 "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": 16,
 "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": 16,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "In the belovèd hour that ushers day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the pure dew, under the breaking grey,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One bird, ere yet the woodland choirs awake,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With brief réveillé summons all the brake:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Chirp, chirp, it goes; nor waits an answer long;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that small signal fills the grove with song.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thus on my pipe I breathed a strain or two;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It scarce was music, but ’twas all I knew.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It was not music, for I lacked the art,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet what but frozen music filled my heart?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Chirp, chirp, I went, nor hoped a nobler strain;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But Heaven decreed I should not pipe in vain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For, lo! not far from there, in secret dale,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All silent, sat an ancient nightingale.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My sparrow notes he heard; thereat awoke;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And with a tide of song his silence broke.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}