{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/to-sydney",
 "title": "To Sydney",
 "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": 20,
 "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": 54,
  "n_stanzas": 9,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 41,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Not thine where marble-still and white",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Old statues share the tempered light",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And mock the uneven modern flight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But in the stream",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of daily sorrow and delight",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To seek a theme.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I too, O friend, have steeled my heart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Boldly to choose the better part,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To leave the beaten ways of art,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And wholly free",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To dare, beyond the scanty chart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The deeper sea.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "All vain restrictions left behind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Frail bark! I loose my anchored mind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And large, before the prosperous wind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Desert the strand⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "A new Columbus sworn to find",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The morning land.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Nor too ambitious, friend. To thee",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I own my weakness. Not for me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To sing the enfranchised nations’ glee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or count the cost",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of warships foundered far at sea",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And battles lost.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "High on the far-seen, sunny hills,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Morning-content my bosom fills;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Well-pleased, I trace the wandering rills",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And learn their birth.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Far off, the clash of sovereign wills",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "May shake the earth.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The nimble circuit of the wheel,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The uncertain poise of merchant weal,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Heaven of famine, fire and steel",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When nations fall;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "These, heedful, from afar I feel⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I mark them all.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But not, my friend, not these I sing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My voice shall fill a narrower ring.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tired souls, that flag upon the wing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I seek to cheer:",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Brave wines to strengthen hope I bring,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Life’s cantineer!",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Some song that shall be suppling oil",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To weary muscles strained with toil,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall hearten for the daily moil,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or widely read",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Make sweet for him that tills the soil",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His daily bread.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Such songs in my flushed hours I dream",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(High thought) instead of armour gleam",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or warrior cantos ream by ream",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To load the shelves⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Songs with a lilt of words, that seem",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To sing themselves.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}