{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/to-the-commissioners-of-northern-lights",
 "title": "To the Commissioners of Northern Lights",
 "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": null,
 "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": 30,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 40,
  "max_indent": 3
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I send to you, commissioners,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A paper that may please ye, sirs",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(For troth they say it might be worse",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "An’ I believe’t)",
    "indent": 3
   },
   {
    "text": "And on your business lay my curse",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before I leav’t.",
    "indent": 3
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I thocht I’d serve wi’ you, sirs, yince,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I’ve thocht better of it since;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The maitter I will nowise mince,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But tell ye true:",
    "indent": 3
   },
   {
    "text": "I’ll service wi’ some ither prince,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "An’ no wi’ you.",
    "indent": 3
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I’ve no been very deep, ye’ll think,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cam’ delicately to the brink",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "An’ when the water gart me shrink",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Straucht took the rue,",
    "indent": 3
   },
   {
    "text": "An’ didna stoop my fill to drink⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I own it true.",
    "indent": 3
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I kent on cape and isle, a light",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Burnt fair an’ clearly ilka night;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But at the service I took fright,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As sune’s I saw,",
    "indent": 3
   },
   {
    "text": "An’ being still a neophite",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gaed straucht awa’.",
    "indent": 3
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Anither course I now begin,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The weeg I’ll cairry for my sin,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The court my voice shall echo in,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "An’⁠—wha can tell?⁠—",
    "indent": 3
   },
   {
    "text": "Some ither day I may be yin",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O’ you mysel’.",
    "indent": 3
   }
  ]
 ]
}