{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/what-man-may-learn-what-man-may-do",
 "title": "What Man May Learn, What Man May Do",
 "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": 48,
 "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": 18,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 41,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "What man may learn, what man may do,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of right or wrong of false or true,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While, skipper-like, his course he steers",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through nine and twenty mingled years,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Half misconceived and half forgot,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So much I know and practise not.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Old are the words of wisdom, old",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The counsels of the wise and bold:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To close the ears, to check the tongue,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To keep the pining spirit young;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To act the right, to say the true,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to be kind whate’er you do.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thus we across the modern stage",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Follow the wise of every age;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, as oaks grow and rivers run",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unchanged in the unchanging sun,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So the eternal march of man",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Goes forth on an eternal plan.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}