Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson
Page 432
See! where the lazy coils ascend,
See, where the bonfire sputters red
At even, for the innocent dead.
Why prate of peace? when, warriors all,
We clank in harness into hall,
And ever bare upon the board
Lies the necessary sword.
In the green field or quiet street,
Besieged we sleep, beleaguered eat;
Labour by day and wake o’ nights,
In war with rival appetites.
The rose on roses feeds; the lark
On larks. The sedentary clerk
All morning with a diligent pen
Murders the babes of other men;
And like the beasts of wood and park,
Protects his whelps, defends his den.
Unshamed the narrow aim I hold;
I feed my sheep, patrol my fold;
Breathe war on wolves and rival flocks,
A pious outlaw on the rocks
Of God and morning; and when time
Shall bow, or rivals break me, climb
Where no undubbed civilian dares,
In my war harness, the loud stairs
Of honour; and my conqueror
Hail me a warrior fallen in war.
Vailima.
TROPIC RAIN
As the single pang of the blow, when the metal is mingled well,
Rings and lives and resounds in all the bounds of the bell,
So the thunder above spoke with a single tongue,
So in the heart of the mountain the sound of it rumbled and clung.
Sudden the thunder was drowned — quenched was the levin light —
And the angel-spirit of rain laughed out loud in the night.
Loud as the maddened river raves in the cloven glen,
Angel of rain! you laughed and leaped on the roofs of men;
And the sleepers sprang in their beds, and joyed and feared as you fell.
You struck, and my cabin quailed; the roof of it roared like a bell.
You spoke, and at once the mountain shouted and shook with brooks.
You ceased, and the day returned, rosy, with virgin looks.
And methought that beauty and terror are only one, not two;
And the world has room for love, and death, and thunder, and dew;
And all the sinews of hell slumber in summer air;
And the face of God is a rock, but the face of the rock is fair.
Beneficent streams of tears flow at the finger of pain;
And out of the cloud that smites, beneficent rivers of rain.
Vailima.
AN END OF TRAVEL
Let now your soul in this substantial world
Some anchor strike. Be here the body moored; —
This spectacle immutably from now
The picture in your eye; and when time strikes,
And the green scene goes on the instant blind —
The ultimate helpers, where your horse to-day
Conveyed you dreaming, bear your body dead.
Vailima.
WE UNCOMMISERATE PASS INTO THE NIGHT
We uncommiserate pass into the night
From the loud banquet, and departing leave
A tremor in men’s memories, faint and sweet
And frail as music. Features of our face,
The tones of the voice, the touch of the loved hand,
Perish and vanish, one by one, from earth:
Meanwhile, in the hall of song, the multitude
Applauds the new performer. One, perchance,
One ultimate survivor lingers on,
And smiles, and to his ancient heart recalls
The long forgotten. Ere the morrow die,
He too, returning, through the curtain comes,
And the new age forgets us and goes on.
SING ME A SONG OF A LAD THAT IS GONE
Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.
Mull was astern, Rum on the port,
Eigg on the starboard bow;
Glory of youth glowed in his soul:
Where is that glory now?
Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.
Give me again all that was there,
Give me the sun that shone!
Give me the eyes, give me the soul,
Give me the lad that’s gone!
Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.
Billow and breeze, islands and seas,
Mountains of rain and sun,
All that was good, all that was fair,
All that was me is gone.
TO S. R. CROCKETT. (On receiving a Dedication)
Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how!
Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,
Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor,
Hills of sheep, and the howes of the silent vanished races,
And winds, austere and pure:
Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
Hills of home! and to hear again the call;
Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying,
And hear no more at all.
Vailima.
EVENSONG
The embers of the day are red
Beyond the murky hill.
The kitchen smokes: the bed
In the darkling house is spread:
The great sky darkens overhead,
And the great woods are shrill.
So far have I been led,
Lord, by Thy will:
So far I have followed, Lord, and wondered still.
The breeze from the enbalmèd land
Blows sudden toward the shore,
And claps my cottage door.
I hear the signal, Lord — I understand.
The night at Thy command
Comes. I will eat and sleep and will not question more.
Vailima.
ADDITIONAL POEMS
CONTENTS
A FAMILIAR EPISTLE
RONDELS
OF HIS PITIABLE TRANSFORMATION
EPISTLE TO CHARLES BAXTER
THE SUSQUEHANNAH AND THE DELAWARE
EPISTLE TO ALBERT DEW-SMITH
ALCAICS TO HORATIO F. BROWN
A LYTLE JAPE OF TUSHERIE
TO VIRGIL AND DORA WILLIAMS
BURLESQUE SONNET
THE FINE PACIFIC ISLANDS
AULD REEKIE
THE LESSON OF THE MASTER
THE CONSECRATION OF BRAILLE
SONG
THE LIGHT-KEEPER
A FAMILIAR EPISTLE
Blame me not that this epistle
Is the first you have from me;
Idleness hath held me fettered;
But at last the times are bettered,
And once more I wet my whistle
Here in France beside the sea.
All the green and idle weather,
I have had in sun and shower
Such an easy, warm subsistence,
Such an indolent existence,
I should find it hard to sever
Day from day and hour from hour.
Many a tract-provided ranter
May upbraid me, dark and sour,
Many a bland Utilitarian,
Or excited Millenarian,
— “Pereunt et imputantur” —
You must speak to every hour.
But (the very term’s deception)
You
at least, my Friend, will see
That in sunny grassy meadows,
Trailed across by moving shadows,
To be actively receptive
Is as much as man can be.
He that all the winter grapples
Difficulties — thrust and ward —
Needs to cheer him thro’ his duty
Memories of sun and beauty,
Orchards with the russet apples
Lying scattered on the sward.
Many such I keep in prison,
Keep them here at heart unseen,
Till my muse again rehearses
Long years hence, and in my verses
You shall meet them re-arisen,
Ever comely, ever green.
You know how they never perish,
How, in time of later art,
Memories consecrate and sweeten
Those defaced and tempest-beaten
Flowers of former years we cherish
Half a life, against our heart.
Most, those love-fruits withered greenly,
Those frail, sickly amourettes, —
How they brighten with the distance,
Take new strength and new existence,
Till we see them sitting queenly
Crowned and courted by regrets!
All that loveliest and best is,
Aureole-fashion round their head,
They that looked in life but plainly,
How they stir our spirits vainly
When they come to us, Alcestis —
Like returning from the dead!
Not the old love but another,
Bright she comes at memory’s call,
Our forgotten vows reviving
To a newer, livelier living,
As the dead child to the mother
Seems the fairest child of all.
Thus our Goethe, sacred master,
Travelling backward thro’ his youth,
Surely wandered wrong in trying
To renew the old, undying
Loves that cling in memory faster
Than they ever lived in truth.
Boulogne-sur-Mer, September .
RONDELS
Far have you come, my lady, from the town,
And far from all your sorrows, if you please,
To smell the good sea-winds and hear the seas,
And in green meadows lay your body down.
To find your pale face grow from pale to brown,
Your sad eyes growing brighter by degrees;
Far have you come, my lady, from the town,
And far from all your sorrows, if you please.
Here in this seaboard land of old renown,
In meadow grass go wading to the knees;
Bathe your whole soul a while in simple ease;
There is no sorrow but the sea can drown;
Far have you come, my lady, from the town.
Nous n’irons plus au bois
We’ll walk the woods no more,
But stay beside the fire,
To weep for old desire
And things that are no more.
The woods are spoiled and hoar,
The ways are full of mire;
We’ll walk the woods no more,
But stay beside the fire.
We loved, in days of yore,
Love, laughter, and the lyre.
Ah God, but death is dire,
And death is at the door —
We’ll walk the woods no more.
Château Renard, August .
Since I am sworn to live my life
And not to keep an easy heart,
Some men may sit and drink apart,
I bear a banner in the strife.
Some can take quiet thought to wife,
I am all day at tierce and carte,
Since I am sworn to live my life
And not to keep an easy heart.
I follow gaily to the fife,
Leave Wisdom bowed above a chart,
And Prudence brawing in the mart,
And dare Misfortune to the knife,
Since I am sworn to live my life.
OF HIS PITIABLE TRANSFORMATION
I who was young so long,
Young and alert and gay,
Now that my hair is grey,
Begin to change my song.
Now I know right from wrong,
Now I know pay and pray,
I who was young so long,
Young and alert and gay.
Now I follow the throng,
Walk in the beaten way,
Hear what the elders say,
And own that I was wrong —
I who was young so long.
.
EPISTLE TO CHARLES BAXTER
Noo lyart leaves blaw ower the green,
Red are the bonny woods o’ Dean,
An’ here we’re back in Embro, freen’,
To pass the winter.
Whilk noo, wi’ frosts afore, draws in,
An’ snaws ahint her.
I’ve seen ‘s hae days to fricht us a’,
The Pentlands poothered weel wi’ snaw,
The ways half-smoored wi’ liquid thaw,
An’ half-congealin’,
The snell an’ scowtherin’ norther blaw
Frae blae Brunteelan’.
I’ve seen ‘s been unco sweir to sally,
And at the door-cheeks daff an’ dally,
Seen ‘s daidle thus an’ shilly-shally
For near a minute —
Sae cauld the wind blew up the valley,
The deil was in it! —
Syne spread the silk an’ tak the gate,
In blast an’ blaudin’, rain, deil hae ‘t!
The hale toon glintin’, stane an’ slate,
Wi’ cauld an’ weet,
An’ to the Court, gin we ‘se be late,
Bicker oor feet.
And at the Court, tae, aft I saw
Whaur Advocates by twa an’ twa
Gang gesterin’ end to end the ha’
In weeg an’ goon,
To crack o’ what ye wull but Law
The hale forenoon.
That muckle ha’, maist like a kirk,
I’ve kent at braid mid-day sae mirk
Ye’d seen white weegs an’ faces lurk
Like ghaists frae Hell,
But whether Christian ghaists or Turk,
Deil ane could tell.
The three fires lunted in the gloom,
The wind blew like the blast o’ doom,
The rain upo’ the roof abune
Played Peter Dick —
Ye wad nae’d licht enough i’ the room
Your teeth to pick!
But, freend, ye ken how me an’ you,
The ling-lang lanely winter through,
Keep’d a guid speerit up, an’ true
To lore Horatian,
We aye the ither bottle drew
To inclination.
Sae let us in the comin’ days
Stand sicker on our auncient ways —
The strauchtest road in a’ the maze
Since Eve ate apples;
An’ let the winter weet our cla’es —
We’ll weet oor thrapples.
Edinburgh, October .
THE SUSQUEHANNAH AND THE DELAWARE
Of where or how, I nothing know;
And why, I do not care;
Enough if, even so,
My travelling eyes, my travelling mind can go
By flood and field and hill, by wood and meadow fair,
Beside the Susquehannah and along the Delaware.
I think, I hope, I dream no more
The dreams of otherwhere,
The cherished thoughts of yore;
I have been changed from what I was before;
And drunk too deep perchance the lotus of the air,
Beside the Susquehannah and along the Delaware.
Unweary, God m
e yet shall bring
To lands of brighter air,
Where I, now half a king,
Shall with enfranchised spirit loudlier sing,
And wear a bolder front than that which now I wear
Beside the Susquehannah and along the Delaware.
August .
EPISTLE TO ALBERT DEW-SMITH
Figure me to yourself, I pray —
A man of my peculiar cut —
Apart from dancing and deray,
Into an Alpine valley shut;
Shut in a kind of damned Hotel,
Discountenanced by God and man;
The food? — Sir, you would do as well
To cram your belly full of bran.
The company? Alas, the day
That I should dwell with such a crew,
With devil anything to say,
Nor any one to say it to!
The place? Although they call it Platz,
I will be bold and state my view;
It’s not a place at all — and that’s
The bottom verity, my Dew.
There are, as I will not deny,
Innumerable inns; a road;
Several Alps indifferent high;
The snow’s inviolable abode;
Eleven English parsons, all
Entirely inoffensive; four
True human beings — what I call
Human — the deuce a cipher more;
A climate of surprising worth;
Innumerable dogs that bark;
Some air, some weather, and some earth;
A native race — God save the mark! —
A race that works, yet cannot work,
Yodels, but cannot yodel right,
Such as, unhelp’d, with rusty dirk,
I vow that I could wholly smite.
A river that from morn to night
Down all the valley plays the fool;
Not once she pauses in her flight,
Nor knows the comfort of a pool;
But still keeps up, by straight or bend,
The selfsame pace she hath begun —
Still hurry, hurry, to the end —
Good God, is that the way to run?
If I a river were, I hope
That I should better realise
The opportunities and scope
Of that romantic enterprise.
I should not ape the merely strange,
But aim besides at the divine;
And continuity and change
I still should labour to combine.
Here should I gallop down the race,
Here charge the sterling like a bull;
There, as a man might wipe his face,