Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (511 page)

The common lot we scarce perceive.

Crowds perish, we nor mark nor grieve:

The bugle calls — we mourn a few!

What corporal’s guard at Waterloo?

What scanty hundreds more or less

In the man-devouring Wilderness?

What handful bled on Delhi ridge?

— See, rather, London, on thy bridge

The pale battalions trample by,

Resolved to slay, resigned to die.

Count, rather, all the maimed and dead

In the unbrotherly war of bread.

See, rather, under sultrier skies

What vegetable Londons rise,

And teem, and suffer without sound.

Or in your tranquil garden ground,

Contented, in the falling gloom,

Saunter and see the roses bloom.

That these might live, what thousands died!

All day the cruel hoe was plied;

The ambulance barrow rolled all day;

Your wife, the tender, kind, and gay,

Donned her long gauntlets, caught the spud

And bathed in vegetable blood;

And the long massacre now at end,

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.

XXXIX

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.

XL

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.

XLI

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.

XLII

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.

XLIII

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 homes 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.

XLIV

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 embalmèd 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
.

II

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,