{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/to-minnie",
 "title": "To Minnie",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Robert Louis Stevenson",
 "poet_slug": "robert-louis-stevenson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "A Child's Garden of Verses",
 "book_slug": "childs-garden-of-verses",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 58,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1885,
  "venue": "A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/achildsgardenve04stevgoog"
  ]
 },
 "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": 67,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 46,
  "max_indent": 0
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "The red room with the giant bed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where none but elders lay their head;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The little room where you and I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Did for a while together lie,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, simple suitor, I your hand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In decent marriage did demand;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The great day-nursery, best of all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With pictures pasted on the wall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And leaves upon the blind⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A pleasant room wherein to wake",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And hear the leafy garden shake",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And rustle in the wind⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And pleasant there to lie in bed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And see the pictures overhead⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The wars about Sebastopol,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The grinning guns along the wall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The daring escalade,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The plunging ships, the bleating sheep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The happy children ankle-deep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And laughing as they wade:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All these are vanished clean away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the old manse is changed today;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It wears an altered face",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And shields a stranger race.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The river, on from mill to mill,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Flows past our childhood’s garden still;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But ah! we children never more",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall watch it from the water-door!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Below the yew⁠—it still is there⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our phantom voices haunt the air",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As we were still at play,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I can hear them call and say:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“How far is it to Babylon?”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ah, far enough, my dear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Far, far enough from here⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet you have farther gone!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Can I get there by candlelight?”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So goes the old refrain.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I do not know⁠—perchance you might⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But only, children, hear it right,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ah, never to return again!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The eternal dawn, beyond a doubt,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall break on hill and plain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And put all stars and candles out,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ere we be young again.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "To you in distant India, these",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I send across the seas,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor count it far across.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For which of us forgets",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Indian cabinets,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The bones of antelope, the wings of albatross,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The pied and painted birds and beans,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The junks and bangles, beads and screens,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The gods and sacred bells,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the loud-humming, twisted shells?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The level of the parlour floor",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was honest, homely, Scottish shore;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But when we climbed upon a chair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Behold the gorgeous East was there!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be this a fable; and behold",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Me in the parlour as of old,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Minnie just above me set",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the quaint Indian cabinet!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Smiling and kind, you grace a shelf",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Too high for me to reach myself.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Reach down a hand, my dear, and take",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These rhymes for old acquaintance’ sake.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}