{
 "id": "walt-whitman/to-a-foild-european-revolutionaire",
 "title": "To a Foil’d European Revolutionaire",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 197,
 "container": "Autumn Rivulets",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1856,
  "venue": "Leaves of Grass (Brooklyn, 1856)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the Whitman Archive transcription of the 1856 Fowler & Wells edition (ppp.00237). The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://whitmanarchive.org/item/ppp.00237"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "autumn-rivulets.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 35,
  "n_stanzas": 9,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 112,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Courage yet, my brother or my sister!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Keep on⁠—Liberty is to be subserv’d whatever occurs;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That is nothing that is quell’d by one or two failures, or any number of failures,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any unfaithfulness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows no discouragement,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Waiting patiently, waiting its time.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "(Not songs of loyalty alone are these,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But songs of insurrection also,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world over,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And stakes his life to be lost at any moment.)",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The infidel triumphs, or supposes he triumphs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and lead-balls do their work,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The great speakers and writers are exiled, they lie sick in distant lands,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The cause is asleep, the strongest throats are choked with their own blood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The young men droop their eyelashes toward the ground when they meet;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But for all this Liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the infidel enter’d into full possession.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the infidel come into full possession.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Then courage European revolter, revoltress!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For till all ceases neither must you cease.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am for myself, nor what any thing is for,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I will search carefully for it even in being foil’d,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In defeat, poverty, misconception, imprisonment⁠—for they too are great.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Did we think victory great?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So it is⁠—but now it seems to me, when it cannot be help’d, that defeat is great,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that death and dismay are great.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}