The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 14

ENVOILet us, who part like brothers, part like bards;And you in your tongue and measure, I in mine,Our now division duly solemnise.Unlike the strains, and yet the theme is one:The strains unlike, and how unlike their fate!You to the blinding palace-yard shall callThe prefect of the singers, and to him,Listening devout, your valedictory verseDeliver; he, his attribute fulfilled,To the island chorus hand your measures on,Wed now with harmony: so them, at last,Night after night, in the open hall of dance,Shall thirty matted men, to the clapped hand,Intone and bray and bark. Unfortunate!Paper and print alone shall honour mine.

THE SONG

Let now the King his ear arouseAnd toss the bosky ringlets from his brows,The while, our bond to implement,My muse relates and praises his descent.IBride of the shark, her valour first I singWho on the lone seas quickened of a King.She, from the shore and puny homes of men,Beyond the climber’s sea-discerning ken,Swam, led by omens; and devoid of fear,Beheld her monstrous paramour draw near.She gazed; all round her to the heavenly pale,The simple sea was void of isle or sail —Sole overhead the unsparing sun was reared —When the deep bubbled and the brute appeared.But she, secure in the decrees of fate,Made strong her bosom and received the mate,And, men declare, from that marine embraceConceived the virtues of a stronger race.IIHer stern descendant next I praise,Survivor of a thousand frays: —In the hall of tongues who ruled the throng;Led and was trusted by the strong;And when spears were in the wood,Like a tower of vantage stood: —Whom, not till seventy years had sped,Unscarred of breast, erect of head,Still light of step, still bright of look,The hunter, Death, had overtook.IIIHis sons, the brothers twain, I sing.Of whom the elder reigned a King.No Childeric he, yet much declinedFrom his rude sire’s imperious mind,Until his day came when he died,He lived, he reigned, he versified.But chiefly him I celebrateThat was the pillar of the state,Ruled, wise of word and bold of mien,The peaceful and the warlike scene;And played alike the leader’s partIn lawful and unlawful art.His soldiers with emboldened earsHeard him laugh among the spears.He could deduce from age to ageThe web of island parentage;Best lay the rhyme, best lead the dance,For any festal circumstance:And fitly fashion oar and boat,A palace or an armour coat.None more availed than he to raiseThe strong, suffumigating blaze,Or knot the wizard leaf: none more,Upon the untrodden windward shoreOf the isle, beside the beating main,To cure the sickly and constrain,With muttered words and waving rods,The gibbering and the whistling gods.But he, though thus with hand and headHe ruled, commanded, charmed, and led,And thus in virtue and in mightTowered to contemporary sight —Still in fraternal faith and love,Remained below to reach above,Gave and obeyed the apt command,Pilot and vassal of the land.IVMy Tembinok’ from men like theseInherited his palaces,His right to rule, his powers of mind,His cocoa-islands sea-enshrined.Stern bearer of the sword and whip,A master passed in mastership,He learned, without the spur of need,To write, to cipher, and to read;From all that touch on his prone shoreAugments his treasury of lore,Eager in age as erst in youthTo catch an art, to learn a truth,To paint on the internal pageA clearer picture of the age.His age, you say? But ah, not so!In his lone isle of long ago,A royal Lady of Shalott,Sea-sundered, he beholds it not;He only hears it far away.The stress of equatorial dayHe suffers; he records the whileThe vapid annals of the isle;Slaves bring him praise of his renown,Or cackle of the palm-tree town;The rarer ship and the rare boatHe marks; and only hears remote,Where thrones and fortunes rise and reel,The thunder of the turning wheel.VFor the unexpected tears he shedAt my departing, may his lion headNot whiten, his revolving yearsNo fresh occasion minister of tears;At book or cards, at work or sport,Him may the breeze across the palace courtFor ever fan; and swelling nearFor ever the loud song divert his ear.Schooner Equator, at Sea.

XXXVIII

THE WOODMAN

In all the grove, nor stream nor birdNor aught beside my blows was heard,And the woods wore their noonday dress —The glory of their silentness.From the island summit to the seas,Trees mounted, and trees drooped, and treesGroped upward in the gaps. The greenInarboured talus and ravineBy fathoms. By the multitude,The rugged columns of the woodAnd bunches of the branches stood:Thick as a mob, deep as a sea,And silent as eternity.With lowered axe, with backward head,Late from this scene my labourer fled,And with a ravelled tale to tell,Returned. Some denizen of hell,Dead man or disinvested god,Had close behind him peered and trod,And triumphed when he turned to flee.How different fell the lines with me!Whose eye explored the dim arcadeImpatient of the uncoming shade —Shy elf, or dryad pale and cold,Or mystic lingerer from of old:Vainly. The fair and stately things,Impassive as departed kings,All still in the wood’s stillness stood,And dumb. The rooted multitudeNodded and brooded, bloomed and dreamed,Unmeaning, undivined. It seemedNo other art, no hope, they knew,Than clutch the earth and seek the blue.’Mid vegetable king and priestAnd stripling, I (the only beast)Was at the beast’s work, killing; hewedThe stubborn roots across, bestrewedThe glebe with the dislustred leaves,And bade the saplings fall in sheaves;Bursting across the tangled mathA ruin that I called a path,A Golgotha that, later on,When rains had watered, and suns shone,And seeds enriched the place, should bearAnd be called garden. Here and there,I spied and plucked by the green hairA foe more resolute to live,The toothed and killing sensitive.He, semi-conscious, fled the attack;He shrank and tucked his branches back;And straining by his anchor strand,Captured and scratched the rooting hand.I saw him crouch, I felt him bite;And straight my eyes were touched with sight.I saw the wood for what it was;The lost and the victorious cause;The deadly battle pitched in line,Saw silent weapons cross and shine:Silent defeat, silent assault,A battle and a burial vault.Thick round me in the teeming mudBriar and fern strove to the blood.The hooked liana in his ginNoosed his reluctant neighbours in:There the green murderer throve and spread,Upon his smothering victims fed,And wantoned on his climbing coil.Contending roots fought for the soilLike frightened demons: with despairCompeting branches pushed for air.Green conquerors from overheadBestrode the bodies of their dead;The Caesars of the silvan field,Unused to fail, foredoomed to yield:For in the groins of branches, lo!The cancers of the orchid grow.Silent as in the listed ringTwo chartered wrestlers strain and cling,Dumb as by yellow Hooghly’s sideThe suffocating captives died:So hushed the woodland warfare goesUnceasing; and the silent foesGrapple and smother, strain and claspWithout a cry, without a gasp.Here also sound Thy fans, O God,Here too Thy banners move abroad:Forest and city, sea and shore,And the whole earth, Thy threshing-floor!The drums of war, the drums of peace,Roll through our cities without cease,And all the iron halls of lifeRing with the unremitting strife.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 lessIn the man-devouring Wilderness?What handful bled on Delhi ridge?– See, rather, London, on thy bridgeThe pale battalions trample by,Resolved to slay, resigned to die.Count, rather, all the maimed and deadIn the unbrotherly war of bread.See, rather, under sultrier skiesWhat 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 spudAnd bathed in vegetable blood;And the long massacre now at end,See! where the lazy coils ascend,See, where the bonfire sputters redAt even, for the innocent dead.Why prate of peace? when, warriors all,We clank in harness into hall,And ever bare upon the boardLies 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 larkOn larks. The sedentary clerkAll morning with a diligent penMurders 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 rocksOf God and morning; and when timeShall bow, or rivals break me, climbWhere no undubbed civilian dares,In my war harness, the loud stairsOf honour; and my conquerorHail 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 worldSome anchor strike. Be here the body moored; —This spectacle immutably from nowThe picture in your eye; and when time strikes,And the green scene goes on the instant blind —The ultimate helpers, where your horse to-dayConveyed you dreaming, bear your body dead.Vailima.

XLI

We uncommiserate pass into the nightFrom the loud banquet, and departing leaveA tremor in men’s memories, faint and sweetAnd 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 multitudeApplauds the new performer. One, perchance,One ultimate survivor lingers on,And smiles, and to his ancient heart recallsThe 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 dayOver 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 dayOver 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 dayOver 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 redBeyond the murky hill.The kitchen smokes: the bedIn 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 landBlows sudden toward the shore,And claps my cottage door.I hear the signal, Lord – I understand.The night at Thy commandComes. I will eat and sleep and will not question more.Vailima.

ADDITIONAL POEMS

I

A FAMILIAR EPISTLE

Blame me not that this epistleIs the first you have from me;Idleness hath held me fettered;But at last the times are bettered,And once more I wet my whistleHere in France beside the sea.All the green and idle weather,I have had in sun and showerSuch an easy, warm subsistence,Such an indolent existence,I should find it hard to severDay from day and hour from hour.Many a tract-provided ranterMay 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 seeThat in sunny grassy meadows,Trailed across by moving shadows,To be actively receptiveIs as much as man can be.He that all the winter grapplesDifficulties – thrust and ward —Needs to cheer him thro’ his dutyMemories of sun and beauty,Orchards with the russet applesLying scattered on the sward.Many such I keep in prison,Keep them here at heart unseen,Till my muse again rehearsesLong years hence, and in my versesYou shall meet them re-arisen,Ever comely, ever green.You know how they never perish,How, in time of later art,Memories consecrate and sweetenThose defaced and tempest-beatenFlowers of former years we cherishHalf 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 queenlyCrowned 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 vainlyWhen 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 revivingTo a newer, livelier living,As the dead child to the motherSeems the fairest child of all.Thus our Goethe, sacred master,Travelling backward thro’ his youth,Surely wandered wrong in tryingTo renew the old, undyingLoves that cling in memory fasterThan they ever lived in truth.Boulogne-sur-Mer, September 1872.

II

RONDELS

1

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.

2

Nous n’irons plus au boisWe’ll walk the woods no more,But stay beside the fire,To weep for old desireAnd 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 1875.

3

Since I am sworn to live my lifeAnd 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 lifeAnd 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.

4

OF HIS PITIABLE TRANSFORMATIONI 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.1876.

III

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 blawFrae 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-shallyFor 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 sawWhaur Advocates by twa an’ twaGang gesterin’ end to end the ha’In weeg an’ goon,To crack o’ what ye wull but LawThe hale forenoon.That muckle ha’, maist like a kirk,I’ve kent at braid mid-day sae mirkYe’d seen white weegs an’ faces lurkLike 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 abunePlayed Peter Dick —Ye wad nae’d licht enough i’ the roomYour teeth to pick!But, freend, ye ken how me an’ you,The ling-lang lanely winter through,Keep’d a guid speerit up, an’ trueTo lore Horatian,We aye the ither bottle drewTo inclination.Sae let us in the comin’ daysStand sicker on our auncient ways —The strauchtest road in a’ the mazeSince Eve ate apples;An’ let the winter weet our cla’es —We’ll weet oor thrapples.Edinburgh, October 1875.

IV

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 goBy flood and field and hill, by wood and meadow fair,Beside the Susquehannah and along the Delaware.I think, I hope, I dream no moreThe 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 me yet shall bringTo 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 wearBeside the Susquehannah and along the Delaware.August 1879.

V

EPISTLE TO ALBERT DEW-SMITH

Figure me to yourself, I pray —A man of my peculiar cut —Apart from dancing and deray,32Into an Alpine valley shut;Shut in a kind of damned Hotel,Discountenanced by God and man;The food? – Sir, you would do as wellTo cram your belly full of bran.The company? Alas, the dayThat 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’sThe 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, allEntirely inoffensive; fourTrue human beings – what I callHuman – 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 nightDown 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 hopeThat I should better realiseThe opportunities and scopeOf that romantic enterprise.I should not ape the merely strange,But aim besides at the divine;And continuity and changeI still should labour to combine.Here should I gallop down the race,Here charge the sterling33 like a bull;There, as a man might wipe his face,Lie, pleased and panting, in a pool.But what, my Dew, in idle mood,What prate I, minding not my debt?What do I talk of bad or good?The best is still a cigarette.Me whether evil fate assault,Or smiling providences crown —Whether on high the eternal vaultBe blue, or crash with thunder down —I judge the best, whate’er befall,Is still to sit on one’s behind,And, having duly moistened all,Smoke with an unperturbed mind.Davos, November 1880.

VI

ALCAICS TO HORATIO F. BROWN

Brave lads in olden musical centuries,Sang, night by night, adorable choruses,Sat late by alehouse doors in AprilChaunting in joy as the moon was rising:Moon-seen and merry, under the trellises,Flush-faced they played with old polysyllables;Spring scents inspired, old wine diluted;Love and Apollo were there to chorus.Now these, the songs, remain to eternity,Those, only those, the bountiful choristersGone – those are gone, those unrememberedSleep and are silent in earth for ever.So man himself appears and evanishes,So smiles and goes; as wanderers halting atSome green-embowered house, play their music,Play and are gone on the windy highway;Yet dwells the strain enshrined in the memoryLong after they departed eternally,Forth-faring tow’rd far mountain summits,Cities of men on the sounding Ocean.Youth sang the song in years immemorial;Brave chanticleer, he sang and was beautiful;Bird-haunted, green tree-tops in springtimeHeard and were pleased by the voice of singing;Youth goes, and leaves behind him a prodigy —Songs sent by thee afar from VenetianSea-grey lagunes, sea-paven highways,Dear to me here in my Alpine exile.Davos, Spring 1881.

VII

A LYTLE JAPE OF TUSHERIE

By A. TusherThe pleasant river gushesAmong the meadows green;At home the author tushes;For him it flows unseen.The Birds among the BushesMay wanton on the spray;But vain for him who tushesThe brightness of the day!The frog among the rushesSits singing in the blue.By ’r la’kin! but these tushesAre wearisome to do!The task entirely crushesThe spirit of the bard:God pity him who tushes —His task is very hard.The filthy gutter slushes,The clouds are full of rain,But doomed is he who tushesTo tush and tush again.At morn with his hair-brushes,Still “tush” he says and weeps;At night again he tushes,And tushes till he sleeps.And when at length he pushesBeyond the river dark —’Las, to the man who tushes,“Tush” shall be God’s remark!Hyères, May 1883.

VIII

TO VIRGIL AND DORA WILLIAMS

Here, from the forelands of the tideless sea,Behold and take my offering unadorned.In the Pacific air it sprang; it grewAmong the silence of the Alpine air;In Scottish heather blossomed; and at lastBy that unshapen sapphire, in whose faceSpain, Italy, France, Algiers, and Tunis viewTheir introverted mountains, came to fruit.Back now, my Booklet! on the diving ship,And posting on the rails, to home return, —Home, and the friends whose honouring name you bear.Hyères, 1883.

IX

BURLESQUE SONNET

TO ÆNEAS WILLIAM MACKINTOSH

Thee, Mackintosh, artificer of light,Thee, the lone smoker hails! the student, thee;Thee, oft upon the ungovernable sea,The seaman, conscious of approaching night;Thou, with industrious fingers, hast outrightMastered that art, of other arts the key,That bids thick night before the morning flee,And lingering day retains for mortal sight.O Promethean workman, thee I hail,Thee hallowed, thee unparalleled, thee boldTo affront the reign of sleep and darkness old,Thee William, thee Æneas, thee I sing;Thee by the glimmering taper clear and pale,Of light, and light’s purveyance, hail, the king.

X