{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/to-the-muse",
 "title": "To the Muse",
 "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": 24,
 "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": 20,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 39,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Resign the rhapsody, the dream,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To men of larger reach;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Be ours the quest of a plain theme,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The piety of speech.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "As monkish scribes from morning break",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Toiled till the close of light,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor thought a day too long to make",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One line or letter bright:",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "We also with an ardent mind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Time, wealth, and fame forgot,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Our glory in our patience find",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And skim, and skim the pot:",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Till last, when round the house we hear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The evensong of birds,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "One corner of blue heaven appear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In our clear well of words.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Leave, leave it then, muse of my heart!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sans finish and sans frame,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Leave unadorned by needless art",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The picture as it came.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}