Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

by Robert Louis Stevenson

  Bachelor’s buttons, Lady’s smock,

  And the lady Hollyhock.

  Fairy places, fairy things,

  Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,

  Tiny trees for tiny dames —

  These must all be fairy names!

  Tiny woods below whose boughs

  Shady fairies weave a house;

  Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,

  Where the braver fairies climb!

  Fair are grown-up people’s trees,

  But the fairest woods are these;

  Where, if I were not so tall,

  I should live for good and all.

  SUMMER SUN

  GREAT is the sun, and wide he goes

  Through empty heaven without repose;

  And in the blue and glowing days

  More thick than rain he showers his rays

  Though closer still the blinds we pull

  To keep the shady parlour cool,

  Yet he will find a chink or two

  To slip his golden fingers through.

  The dusty attic spider-clad

  He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;

  And through the broken edge of tiles,

  Into the laddered hayloft smiles.

  Meantime his golden face around

  He bares to all the garden ground,

  And sheds a warm and glittering look

  Among the ivy’s inmost nook.

  Above the hills, along the blue,

  Round the bright air with footing true,

  To please the child, to paint the rose,

  The gardener of the World, he goes.

  THE DUMB SOLDIER

  WHEN the grass was closely mown,

  Walking on the lawn alone,

  In the turf a hole I found

  And hid a soldier underground.

  Spring and daisies came apace;

  Grasses hide my hiding place;

  Grasses run like a green sea

  O’er the lawn up to my knee.

  Under grass alone he lies,

  Looking up with leaden eyes,

  Scarlet coat and pointed gun,

  To the stars and to the sun.

  When the grass is ripe like grain

  When the scythe is stoned again,

  When the lawn is shaven clear,

  Then my hole shall reappear.

  I shall find him, never fear,

  I shall find my grenadier;

  But for all that’s gone and come,

  I shall find my soldier dumb.

  He has lived, a little thing,

  In the grassy woods of spring;

  Done, if he could tell me true,

  Just as I should like to do.

  He has seen the starry hours

  And the springing of the flowers;

  And the fairy things that pass

  In the forests of the grass.

  In the silence he has heard

  Talking bee and ladybird,

  And the butterfly has flown

  O’er him as he lay alone.

  Not a word will he disclose,

  Not a word of all he knows.

  I must lay him on the shelf,

  And make up the tale myself.

  AUTUMN FIRES

  IN the other gardens

  And all up the vale,

  From the autumn bonfires

  See the smoke trail!

  Pleasant summer over

  And all the summer flowers,

  The red fire blazes,

  The grey smoke towers.

  Sing a song of seasons!

  Something bright in all!

  Flowers in the summer

  Fires in the fall!

  THE GARDENER

  THE gardener does not love to talk,

  He makes me keep the gravel walk;

  And when he puts his tools away,

  He locks the door and takes the key.

  Away behind the currant row

  Where no one else but cook may go,

  Far in the plots, I see him dig,

  Old and serious, brown and big.

  He digs the flowers, green, red, and blue,

  Nor wishes to be spoken to.

  He digs the flowers and cuts the hay,

  And never seems to want to play.

  Silly gardener! summer goes,

  And winter comes with pinching toes,

  When in the garden bare and brown

  You must lay your barrow down.

  Well now, and while the summer stays,

  To profit by these garden days,

  O how much wiser you would be

  To play at Indian wars with me!

  HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS

  DEAR Uncle Jim, this garden ground

  That now you smoke your pipe around,

  Has seen immortal actions done

  And valiant battles lost and won.

  Here we had best on tip-toe tread,

  While I for safety march ahead,

  For this is that enchanted ground

  Where all who loiter slumber sound.

  Here is the sea, here is the sand,

  Here is simple Shepherd’s Land,

  Here are the fairy hollyhocks,

  And there are Ali Baba’s rocks.

  But yonder, see! apart and high,

  Frozen Siberia lies; where I,

  With Robert Bruce and William Tell,

  Was bound by an enchanter’s spell.

  There, then, awhile in chains we lay,

  In wintry dungeons, far from day;

  But ris’n at length, with might and main,

  Our iron fetters burst in twain.

  Then all the horns were blown in town;

  And to the ramparts clanging down,

  All the giants leaped to horse

  And charged behind us through the gorse.

  On we rode, the others and I,

  Over the mountains blue, and by

  The Silver River, the sounding sea,

  And the robber woods of Tartary.

  A thousand miles we galloped fast,

  And down the witches’ lane we passed,

  And rode amain, with brandished sword,

  Up to the middle, through the ford.

  Last we drew rein — a weary three —

  Upon the lawn, in time for tea,

  And from our steeds alighted down

  Before the gates of Babylon.

  ENVOYS

  TO WILLIE AND HENRIETTA

  If two may read aright

  These rhymes of old delight

  And house and garden play,

  You two, my cousins, and you only, may.

  You in a garden green

  With me were king and queen,

  Were hunter, soldier, tar,

  And all the thousand things that children are.

  Now in the elders’ seat

  We rest with quiet feet,

  And from the window-bay

  We watch the children, our successors, play.

  “Time was,” the golden head

  Irrevocably said;

  But time which none can bind,

  While flowing fast away, leaves love behind.

  TO MY MOTHER

  YOU too, my mother, read my rhymes

  For love of unforgotten times,

  And you may chance to hear once more

  The little feet along the floor.

  TO AUNTIE

  CHIEF of our aunts — not only I,

  But all your dozen of nurslings cry —

  What did the other children do?

  And what were childhood, wanting you?

  TO MINNIE

  THE red room with the giant bed

  Where none but elders laid their head;

  The little room where you and I

  Did for awhile together lie

  And, simple suitor, I your hand

  In decent marriage did demand;

  The great day nursery, best of all,

  With pictures pa
sted on the wall

  And leaves upon the blind —

  A pleasant room wherein to wake

  And hear the leafy garden shake

  And rustle in the wind —

  And pleasant there to lie in bed

  And see the pictures overhead —

  The wars about Sebastopol,

  The grinning guns along the wall,

  The daring escalade,

  The plunging ships, the bleating sheep,

  The happy children ankle-deep

  And laughing as they wade:

  All these are vanished clean away,

  And the old manse is changed today;

  It wears an altered face

  And shields a stranger race.

  The river, on from mill to mill,

  Flows past our childhood’s garden still;

  But ah! we children never more

  Shall watch it from the water-door!

  Below the yew — it still is there —

  Our phantom voices haunt the air

  As we were still at play,

  And I can hear them call and say:

  “How far is it to Babylon?”

  Ah, far enough, my dear,

  Far, far enough from here —

  Yet you have farther gone!

  “Can I get there by candlelight?”

  So goes the old refrain.

  I do not know — perchance you might —

  But only, children, hear it right,

  Ah, never to return again!

  The eternal dawn, beyond a doubt,

  Shall break on hill and plain,

  And put all stars and candles out,

  Ere we be young again.

  To you in distant India, these

  I send across the seas,

  Nor count it far across.

  For which of us forgets

  The Indian cabinets,

  The bones of antelope, the wings of albatross,

  The pied and painted birds and beans,

  The junks and bangles, beads and screens,

  The gods and sacred bells,

  And the loud-humming, twisted shells?

  The level of the parlour floor

  Was honest, homely, Scottish shore;

  But when we climbed upon a chair,

  Behold the gorgeous East was there!

  Be this a fable; and behold

  Me in the parlour as of old,

  And Minnie just above me set

  In the quaint Indian cabinet!

  Smiling and kind, you grace a shelf

  Too high for me to reach myself.

  Reach down a hand, my dear, and take

  These rhymes for old acquaintance’ sake.

  TO MY NAME-CHILD

  1

  Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed,

  Little Louis Sanchez, will be given you to read.

  Then shall you discover, that your name was printed down

  By the English printers, long before, in London town.

  In the great and busy city where the East and West are met,

  All the little letters did the English printer set;

  While you thought of nothing, and were still too young to play,

  Foreign people thought of you in places far away.

  Ay, and while you slept, a baby, over all the English lands

  Other little children took the volume in their hands;

  Other children questioned, in their homes across the seas:

  Who was little Louis, won’t you tell us, mother, please?

  2

  Now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and play,

  Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey,

  Watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried by the breeze,

  Tiny sandy-pipers, and the huge Pacific seas.

  And remember in your playing, as the sea-fog rolls to you,

  Long ere you could read it, how I told you what to do;

  And that while you thought of no one, nearly half the world away

  Some one thought of Louis on the beach of Monterey!

  TO ANY READER

  AS from the house your mother sees

  You playing round the garden trees,

  So you may see, if you will look

  Through the windows of this book,

  Another child, far, far away,

  And in another garden, play.

  But do not think you can at all,

  By knocking on the window, call

  That child to hear you. He intent

  Is all on his play-business bent.

  He does not hear; he will not look,

  Nor yet be lured out of this book.

  For, long ago, the truth to say,

  He has grown up and gone away,

  And it is but a child of air

  That lingers in the garden there.

  UNDERWOODS

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  NOTE

  BOOK I. In English

  ENVOY

  A SONG OF THE ROAD

  THE CANOE SPEAKS

  THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL

  A VISIT FROM THE SEA

  TO A GARDENER

  TO MINNIE

  TO K. DE M.

  TO N. V. DE G. S.

  TO WILL. H. LOW

  TO MRS. WILL. H. LOW

  TO H. F. BROWN

  TO ANDREW LANG

  ET TU IN ARCADIA VIXISTI

  TO W. E. HENLEY

  HENRY JAMES

  THE MIRROR SPEAKS

  KATHARINE

  TO F. J. S.

  REQUIEM

  THE CELESTIAL SURGEON

  OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS

  THE SICK CHILD

  IN MEMORIAM F. A. S.

  TO MY FATHER

  IN THE STATES

  A PORTRAIT

  A CAMP

  THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS

  SKERRYVORE

  SKERRYVORE: The Parallel

  BOOK II. In Scots

  THE MAKER TO POSTERITY

  ILLE TERRARUM

  A MILE AN’ A BITTOCK

  A LOWDEN SABBATH MORN

  THE SPAEWIFE

  THE BLAST — 1875

  THE COUNTERBLAST — 1886

  THE COUNTERBLAST IRONICAL

  THEIR LAUREATE TO AN ACADEMY CLASS DINNER CLUB

  EMBRO HIE KIRK

  THE SCOTSMAN’S RETURN FROM ABROAD

  MY CONSCIENCE!

  TO DOCTOR JOHN BROWN

  XVI. “IT’S AN OWERCOME SOOTH FOR AGE AN’ YOUTH”

  Of all my verse, like not a single line;

  But like my title, for it is not mine.

  That title from a better man I stole:

  Ah, how much better, had I stol’n the whole!

  DEDICATION

  There are men and classes of men that stand above the common herd: the soldier, the sailor and the shepherd not unfrequently; the artist rarely; rarely still, the clergyman; the physician almost as a rule. He is the flower (such as it is) of our civilisation; and when that stage of man is done with, and only remembered to be marvelled at in history, he will be thought to have shared as little as any in the defects of the period, and most notably exhibited the virtues of the race. Generosity he has, such as is possible to those who practise an art, never to those who drive a trade; discretion, tested by a hundred secrets; tact, tried in a thousand embarrassments; and what are more important, Heraclean cheerfulness and courage. So it is that he brings air and cheer into the sickroom, and often enough, though not so often as he wishes, brings healing.

  Gratitude is but a lame sentiment; thanks, when they are expressed, are often more embarrassing than welcome; and yet I must set forth mine to a few out of many doctors who have brought me comfort and help: to Dr. Willey of San Francisco, whose kindness to a stranger it must be as grateful to him, as it is touching to me, to remember; to Dr. Karl Ruedi of Davos, the good genius of the English in his frosty mountains; to Dr. Herbert of P
aris, whom I knew only for a week, and to Dr. Caissot of Montpellier, whom I knew only for ten days, and who have yet written their names deeply in my memory; to Dr. Brandt of Royat; to Dr. Wakefield of Nice; to Dr. Chepmell, whose visits make it a pleasure to be ill; to Dr. Horace Dobell, so wise in counsel; to Sir Andrew Clark, so unwearied in kindness and to that wise youth, my uncle, Dr. Balfour.

  I forget as many as I remember; and I ask both to pardon me, these for silence, those for inadequate speech. But one name I have kept on purpose to the last, because it is a household word with me, and because if I had not received favours from so many hands and in so many quarters of the world, it should have stood upon this page alone: that of my friend Thomas Bodley Scott of Bournemouth. Will he accept this, although shared among so many, for a dedication to himself? and when next my ill-fortune (which has thus its pleasant side) brings him hurrying to me when he would fain sit down to meat or lie down to rest, will he care to remember that he takes this trouble for one who is not fool enough to be ungrateful?

  R. L. S.

  Skerryvore,

  Bournemouth.

  NOTE

  The human conscience has fled of late the troublesome domain of conduct for what I should have supposed to be the less congenial field of art: there she may now be said to rage, and with special severity in all that touches dialect; so that in every novel the letters of the alphabet are tortured, and the reader wearied, to commemorate shades of mis-pronunciation. Now spelling is an art of great difficulty in my eyes, and I am inclined to lean upon the printer, even in common practice, rather than to venture abroad upon new quests. And the Scots tongue has an orthography of its own, lacking neither “authority nor author.” Yet the temptation is great to lend a little guidance to the bewildered Englishman. Some simple phonetic artifice might defend your verses from barbarous mishandling, and yet not injure any vested interest. So it seems at first; but there are rocks ahead. Thus, if I wish the diphthong ou to have its proper value, I may write oor instead of our; many have done so and lived, and the pillars of the universe remained unshaken. But if I did so, and came presently to doun, which is the classical Scots spelling of the English down, I should begin to feel uneasy; and if I went on a little farther, and came to a classical Scots word, like stour or dour or clour, I should know precisely where I was — that is to say, that I was out of sight of land on those high seas of spelling reform in which so many strong swimmers have toiled vainly. To some the situation is exhilarating; as for me, I give one bubbling cry and sink. The compromise at which I have arrived is indefensible, and I have no thought of trying to defend it. As I have stuck for the most part to the proper spelling, I append a table of some common vowel sounds which no one need consult; and just to prove that I belong to my age and have in me the stuff of a reformer, I have used modification marks throughout. Thus I can tell myself, not without pride, that I have added a fresh stumbling-block for English readers, and to a page of print in my native tongue, have lent a new uncouthness. Sed non nobis.