Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Nothing is here that means you ill —

  Nothing but lamps the whole town through,

  And never a child awake but you.

  Child. Mother, mother, speak low in my ear,

  Some of the things are so great and near,

  Some are so small and far away,

  I have a fear that I cannot say,

  What have I done, and what do I fear,

  And why are you crying, mother dear?

  Mother. Out in the city, sounds begin

  Thank the kind God, the carts come in!

  An hour or two more, and God is so kind,

  The day shall be blue in the window-blind,

  Then shall my child go sweetly asleep,

  And dream of the birds and the hills of sheep.

  IN MEMORIAM F. A. S.

  Yet, O stricken heart, remember, O remember

  How of human days he lived the better part.

  April came to bloom and never dim December

  Breathed its killing chills upon the head or heart.

  Doomed to know not Winter, only Spring, a being

  Trod the flowery April blithely for a while,

  Took his fill of music, joy of thought and seeing,

  Came and stayed and went, nor ever ceased to smile.

  Came and stayed and went, and now when all is finished,

  You alone have crossed the melancholy stream,

  Yours the pang, but his, O his, the undiminished

  Undecaying gladness, undeparted dream.

  All that life contains of torture, toil, and treason,

  Shame, dishonour, death, to him were but a name.

  Here, a boy, he dwelt through all the singing season

  And ere the day of sorrow departed as he came.

  Davos, 1881.

  TO MY FATHER

  Peace and her huge invasion to these shores

  Puts daily home; innumerable sails

  Dawn on the far horizon and draw near;

  Innumerable loves, uncounted hopes

  To our wild coasts, not darkling now, approach:

  Not now obscure, since thou and thine are there,

  And bright on the lone isle, the foundered reef,

  The long, resounding foreland, Pharos stands.

  These are thy works, O father, these thy crown;

  Whether on high the air be pure, they shine

  Along the yellowing sunset, and all night

  Among the unnumbered stars of God they shine;

  Or whether fogs arise and far and wide

  The low sea-level drown — each finds a tongue

  And all night long the tolling bell resounds:

  So shine, so toll, till night be overpast,

  Till the stars vanish, till the sun return,

  And in the haven rides the fleet secure.

  In the first hour, the seaman in his skiff

  Moves through the unmoving bay, to where the town

  Its earliest smoke into the air upbreathes

  And the rough hazels climb along the beach.

  To the tugg’d oar the distant echo speaks.

  The ship lies resting, where by reef and roost

  Thou and thy lights have led her like a child.

  This hast thou done, and I — can I be base?

  I must arise, O father, and to port

  Some lost, complaining seaman pilot home.

  IN THE STATES

  With half a heart I wander here

  As from an age gone by

  A brother — yet though young in years.

  An elder brother, I.

  You speak another tongue than mine,

  Though both were English born.

  I towards the night of time decline,

  You mount into the morn.

  Youth shall grow great and strong and free,

  But age must still decay:

  To-morrow for the States — for me,

  England and Yesterday.

  San Francisco.

  A PORTRAIT

  I am a kind of farthing dip,

  Unfriendly to the nose and eyes;

  A blue-behinded ape, I skip

  Upon the trees of Paradise.

  At mankind’s feast, I take my place

  In solemn, sanctimonious state,

  And have the air of saying grace

  While I defile the dinner plate.

  I am “the smiler with the knife,”

  The battener upon garbage, I —

  Dear Heaven, with such a rancid life,

  Were it not better far to die?

  Yet still, about the human pale,

  I love to scamper, love to race,

  To swing by my irreverent tail

  All over the most holy place;

  And when at length, some golden day,

  The unfailing sportsman, aiming at,

  Shall bag, me — all the world shall say:

  Thank God, and there’s an end of that!

  XXXI

  Sing clearlier, Muse, or evermore be still,

  Sing truer or no longer sing!

  No more the voice of melancholy Jacques

  To wake a weeping echo in the hill;

  But as the boy, the pirate of the spring,

  From the green elm a living linnet takes,

  One natural verse recapture — then be still.

  A CAMP

  The bed was made, the room was fit,

  By punctual eve the stars were lit;

  The air was still, the water ran,

  No need was there for maid or man,

  When we put up, my ass and I,

  At God’s green caravanserai.

  THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS

  We travelled in the print of olden wars,

  Yet all the land was green,

  And love we found, and peace,

  Where fire and war had been.

  They pass and smile, the children of the sword —

  No more the sword they wield;

  And O, how deep the corn

  Along the battlefield!

  SKERRYVORE

  For love of lovely words, and for the sake

  Of those, my kinsmen and my countrymen,

  Who early and late in the windy ocean toiled

  To plant a star for seamen, where was then

  The surfy haunt of seals and cormorants:

  I, on the lintel of this cot, inscribe

  The name of a strong tower.

  SKERRYVORE: The Parallel

  Here all is sunny, and when the truant gull

  Skims the green level of the lawn, his wing

  Dispetals roses; here the house is framed

  Of kneaded brick and the plumed mountain pine,

  Such clay as artists fashion and such wood

  As the tree-climbing urchin breaks. But there

  Eternal granite hewn from the living isle

  And dowelled with brute iron, rears a tower

  That from its wet foundation to its crown

  Of glittering glass, stands, in the sweep of winds,

  Immovable, immortal, eminent.

  XXXVI

  My house, I say. But hark to the sunny doves

  That make my roof the arena of their loves,

  That gyre about the gable all day long

  And fill the chimneys with their murmurous song:

  Our house, they say; and mine, the cat declares

  And spreads his golden fleece upon the chairs;

  And mine the dog, and rises stiff with wrath

  If any alien foot profane the path.

  So too the buck that trimmed my terraces,

  Our whilome gardener, called the garden his;

  Who now, deposed, surveys my plain abode

  And his late kingdom, only from the road.

  XXXVII

  My body which my dungeon is,

  And yet my parks and palaces: —

  Which is so great that there I go

  All the day long to and fro,

  And when the nig
ht begins to fall

  Throw down my bed and sleep, while all

  The building hums with wakefulness —

  Even as a child of savages

  When evening takes her on her way,

  (She having roamed a summer’s day

  Along the mountain-sides and scalp)

  Sleeps in an antre of that alp: —

  Which is so broad and high that there,

  As in the topless fields of air,

  My fancy soars like to a kite

  And faints in the blue infinite: —

  Which is so strong, my strongest throes

  And the rough world’s besieging blows

  Not break it, and so weak withal,

  Death ebbs and flows in its loose wall

  As the green sea in fishers’ nets,

  And tops its topmost parapets: —

  Which is so wholly mine that I

  Can wield its whole artillery,

  And mine so little, that my soul

  Dwells in perpetual control,

  And I but think and speak and do

  As my dead fathers move me to: —

  If this born body of my bones

  The beggared soul so barely owns,

  What money passed from hand to hand,

  What creeping custom of the land,

  What deed of author or assign,

  Can make a house a thing of mine?

  XXXVIII

  Say not of me that weakly I declined

  The labours of my sires, and fled the sea,

  The towers we founded and the lamps we lit,

  To play at home with paper like a child.

  But rather say: In the afternoon of time

  A strenuous family dusted from its hands

  The sand of granite, and beholding far

  Along the sounding coast its pyramids

  And tall memorials catch the dying sun,

  Smiled well content, and to this childish task

  Around the fire addressed its evening hours.

  BOOK II. In Scots

  TABLE OF COMMON SCOTTISH VOWEL SOUNDS

  ae, ai

  open A as in rare.

  a’, au, aw

  AW as in law.

  ea

  open E as in mere, but this with exceptions, as heather = heather, wean = wain, lear = lair.

  ee, ei, ie

  open E as in mere.

  oa

  open O as in more.

  ou

  doubled O as in poor.

  ow

  OW as in bower.

  u

  doubled O as in poor.

  ui or ü before R

  (say roughly) open A as in rare.

  ui or ü before any other consonant

  (say roughly) close I as in grin.

  y

  open I as in kite.

  i

  pretty nearly what you please, much as in English, Heaven guide the reader through that labyrinth! But in Scots it dodges usually from the short I, as in grin, to the open E, as in mere. Find the blind, I may remark, are pronounced to rhyme with the preterite of grin.

  THE MAKER TO POSTERITY

  Far ‘yont amang the years to be

  When a’ we think, an’ a’ we see,

  An’ a’ we luve, ‘s been dung ajee

  By time’s rouch shouther,

  An’ what was richt and wrang for me

  Lies mangled throu’ther,

  It’s possible — it’s hardly mair —

  That some ane, ripin’ after lear —

  Some auld professor or young heir,

  If still there’s either —

  May find an’ read me, an’ be sair

  Perplexed, puir brither!

  “What tongue does your auld bookie speak?”

  He’ll spier; an’ I, his mou to steik:

  “No bein’ fit to write in Greek,

  I write in Lallan,

  Dear to my heart as the peat reek,

  Auld as Tantallon.

  “Few spak it then, an’ noo there’s nane.

  My puir auld sangs lie a’ their lane,

  Their sense, that aince was braw an’ plain,

  Tint a’thegether,

  Like runes upon a standin’ stane

  Amang the heather.

  “But think not you the brae to speel;

  You, tae, maun chow the bitter peel;

  For a’ your lear, for a’ your skeel,

  Ye’re nane sae lucky;

  An’ things are mebbe waur than weel

  For you, my buckie.

  “The hale concern (baith hens an’ eggs,

  Baith books an’ writers, stars an’ clegs)

  Noo stachers upon lowsent legs

  An’ wears awa’;

  The tack o’ mankind, near the dregs,

  Rins unco law.

  “Your book, that in some braw new tongue,

  Ye wrote or prentit, preached or sung,

  Will still be just a bairn, an’ young

  In fame an’ years,

  Whan the hale planet’s guts are dung

  About your ears;

  “An’ you, sair gruppin’ to a spar

  Or whammled wi’ some bleezin’ star,

  Cryin’ to ken whaur deil ye are,

  Hame, France, or Flanders —

  Whang sindry like a railway car

  An’ flie in danders.”

  ILLE TERRARUM

  Frae nirly, nippin’, Eas’lan’ breeze,

  Frae Norlan’ snaw, an’ haar o’ seas,

  Weel happit in your gairden trees,

  A bonny bit,

  Atween the muckle Pentland’s knees,

  Secure ye sit.

  Beeches an’ aiks entwine their theek,

  An’ firs, a stench, auld-farrant clique.

  A’ simmer day, your chimleys reek,

  Couthy and bien;

  An’ here an’ there your windies keek

  Amang the green.

  A pickle plats an’ paths an’ posies,

  A wheen auld gillyflowers an’ roses:

  A ring o’ wa’s the hale encloses

  Frae sheep or men;

  An’ there the auld housie beeks an’ dozes,

  A’ by her lane.

  The gairdner crooks his weary back

  A’ day in the pitaty-track,

  Or mebbe stops awhile to crack

  Wi’ Jane the cook,

  Or at some buss, worm-eaten-black,

  To gie a look.

  Frae the high hills the curlew ca’s;

  The sheep gang baaing by the wa’s;

  Or whiles a clan o’ roosty craws

  Cangle thegether;

  The wild bees seek the gairden raws,

  Weariet wi’ heather.

  Or in the gloamin’ douce an’ gray

  The sweet-throat mavis tunes her lay;

  The herd comes linkin’ doun the brae;

  An’ by degrees

  The muckle siller müne maks way

  Amang the trees.

  Here aft hae I, wi’ sober heart,

  For meditation sat apairt,

  When orra loves or kittle art

  Perplexed my mind;

  Here socht a balm for ilka smart

  O’ humankind.

  Here aft, weel neukit by my lane,

  Wi’ Horace, or perhaps Montaigne,

  The mornin’ hours hae come an’ gane

  Abüne my heid —

  I wadnae gi’en a chucky-stane

  For a’ I’d read.

  But noo the auld city, street by street,

  An’ winter fu’ o’ snaw an’ sleet,

  Awhile shut in my gangrel feet

  An’ goavin’ mettle;

  Noo is the soopit ingle sweet,

  An’ liltin’ kettle.

  An’ noo the winter winds complain;

  Cauld lies the glaur in ilka lane;

  On draigled hizzie, tautit wean

  An’ drucken lads,


  In the mirk nicht, the winter rain

  Dribbles an’ blads.

  Whan bugles frae the Castle rock,

  An’ beaten drums wi’ dowie shock,

  Wauken, at cauld-rife sax o’clock,

  My chitterin’ frame,

  I mind me on the kintry cock,

  The kintry hame.

  I mind me on yon bonny bield;

  An’ Fancy traivels far afield

  To gaither a’ that gairdens yield

  O’ sun an’ Simmer:

  To hearten up a dowie chield,

  Fancy’s the limmer!

  III

  When aince Aprile has fairly come,

  An’ birds may bigg in winter’s lum,

  An’ pleisure’s spreid for a’ and some

  O’ whatna state,

  Love, wi’ her auld recruitin’ drum,

  Than taks the gate.

  The heart plays dunt wi’ main an’ micht;

  The lasses’ een are a’ sae bricht,

  Their dresses are sae braw an’ ticht,

  The bonny birdies! —

  Puir winter virtue at the sicht

  Gangs heels ower hurdies.

  An’ aye as love frae land to land

  Tirls the drum wi’ eident hand,

  A’ men collect at her command,

  Toun-bred or land’art,

  An’ follow in a denty band

  Her gaucy standart.

  An’ I, wha sang o’ rain an’ snaw,

  An’ weary winter weel awa’,

  Noo busk me in a jacket braw,

  An’ tak my place

  I’ the ram-stam, harum-scarum raw,

  Wi’ smilin’ face.

  A MILE AN’ A BITTOCK

  A mile an’ a bittock, a mile or twa,

  Abüthe burn, ayont the law,

  Davie an’ Donal’ an’ Cherlie an’ a’,

  An’ the müne was shinin’ clearly!

  Ane went hame wi’ the ither, an’ then

  The ither went hame wi’ the ither twa men,

  An’ baith wad return him the service again,

  An’ the müne was shinin’ clearly!

  The clocks were chappin’ in house an’ ha’,

  Eleeven, twal an’ ane an’ twa;

  An’ the guidman’s face was turnt to the wa’,

  An’ the müne was shinin’ clearly!

  A wind got up frae affa the sea,

  It blew the stars as clear’s could be,

  It blew in the een of a’ o’ the three,

  An’ the müne was shinin’ clearly!