Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (496 page)

My plain-beholding, rosy, green

And linnet-haunted garden-ground,

Let still the esculents abound.

Let first the onion flourish there,

Rose among roots, the maiden-fair,

Wine-scented and poetic soul

Of the capacious salad-bowl.

Let thyme the mountaineer (to dress

The tinier birds) and wading cress,

The lover of the shallow brook,

From all my plots and borders look.

Nor crisp and ruddy radish, nor

Pease-cods for the child’s pinafore

Be lacking; nor of salad clan

The last and least that ever ran

About great nature’s garden-beds.

Nor thence be missed the speary heads

Of artichoke; nor thence the bean

That gathered innocent and green

Outsavours the belauded pea.

These tend, I prithee; and for me,

Thy most long-suffering master, bring

In April, when the linnets sing

And the days lengthen more and more,

At sundown to the garden door.

And I, being provided thus,

Shall, with superb asparagus,

A book, a taper, and a cup

Of country wine, divinely sup.

La Solitude, Hyères.

VIII

TO MINNIE

(WITH A HAND-GLASS)

A picture-frame for you to fill,

A paltry setting for your face,

A thing that has no worth until

You lend it something of your grace,

I send (unhappy I that sing

Laid by a while upon the shelf)

Because I would not send a thing

Less charming than you are yourself.

And happier than I, alas!

(Dumb thing, I envy its delight)

‘Twill wish you well, the looking-glass,

And look you in the face to-night.

.

IX

TO K. de M.

A lover of the moorland bare

And honest country winds you were;

The silver-skimming rain you took;

And love the floodings of the brook,

Dew, frost and mountains, fire and seas,

Tumultuary silences,

Winds that in darkness fifed a tune,

And the high-riding, virgin moon.

And as the berry, pale and sharp,

Springs on some ditch’s counterscarp

In our ungenial, native north —

You put your frosted wildings forth,

And on the heath, afar from man,

A strong and bitter virgin ran.

The berry ripened keeps the rude

And racy flavour of the wood.

And you that loved the empty plain

All redolent of wind and rain,

Around you still the curlew sings —

The freshness of the weather clings —

The maiden jewels of the rain

Sit in your dabbled locks again.

X

TO N. V. de G. S.

The unfathomable sea, and time, and tears,

The deeds of heroes and the crimes of kings

Dispart us; and the river of events

Has, for an age of years, to east and west

More widely borne our cradles. Thou to me

Art foreign, as when seamen at the dawn

Descry a land far off, and know not which.

So I approach uncertain; so I cruise

Round thy mysterious islet, and behold

Surf and great mountains and loud river-bars,

And from the shore hear inland voices call.

Strange is the seaman’s heart; he hopes, he fears;

Draws closer and sweeps wider from that coast;

Last, his rent sail refits, and to the deep

His shattered prow uncomforted puts back.

Yet as he goes he ponders at the helm

Of that bright island; where he feared to touch,

His spirit re-adventures; and for years,

Where by his wife he slumbers safe at home,

Thoughts of that land revisit him; he sees

The eternal mountains beckon, and awakes

Yearning for that far home that might have been.

XI

TO WILL. H. LOW

Youth now flees on feathered foot,

Faint and fainter sounds the flute,

Rarer songs of gods; and still

Somewhere on the sunny hill,

Or along the winding stream,

Through the willows, flits a dream;

Flits but shows a smiling face,

Flees, but with so quaint a grace,

None can choose to stay at home,

All must follow, all must roam.

This is unborn beauty: she

Now in air floats high and free.

Takes the sun and makes the blue; —

Late with stooping pinion flew

Raking hedgerow trees, and wet

Her wing in silver streams, and set

Shining foot on temple roof:

Now again she flies aloof,

Coasting mountain clouds and kiss’t

By the evening’s amethyst.

In wet wood and miry lane,

Still we pant and pound in vain;

Still with leaden foot we chase

Waning pinion, fainting face;

Still with grey hair we stumble on,

Till, behold, the vision gone!

Where hath fleeting beauty led?

To the doorway of the dead.

Life is over, life was gay:

We have come the primrose way.

XII

TO MRS. WILL. H. LOW

Even in the bluest noonday of July,

There could not run the smallest breath of wind

But all the quarter sounded like a wood;

And in the chequered silence and above

The hum of city cabs that sought the Bois,

Suburban ashes shivered into song.

A patter and a chatter and a chirp

And a long dying hiss — it was as though

Starched old brocaded dames through all the house

Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky

Even in a wink had over-brimmed in rain.

Hark, in these shady parlours, how it talks

Of the near Autumn, how the smitten ash

Trembles and augurs floods! O not too long

In these inconstant latitudes delay,

O not too late from the unbeloved north

Trim your escape! For soon shall this low roof

Resound indeed with rain, soon shall your eyes

Search the foul garden, search the darkened rooms,

Nor find one jewel but the blazing log.

 Rue Vernier, Paris.

XIII

TO H. F. BROWN

(WRITTEN DURING A DANGEROUS SICKNESS)

I sit and wait a pair of oars

On cis-Elysian river-shores.

Where the immortal dead have sate,

‘Tis mine to sit and meditate;

To re-ascend life’s rivulet,

Without remorse, without regret;

And sing my
Alma Genetrix

Among the willows of the Styx.

And lo, as my serener soul

Did these unhappy shores patrol,

And wait with an attentive ear

The coming of the gondolier,

Your fire-surviving roll I took,

Your spirited and happy book;

Whereon, despite my frowning fate,

It did my soul so recreate

That all my fancies fled away

On a Venetian holiday.

Now, thanks to your triumphant care,

Your pages clear as April air,

The sails, the bells, the birds, I know,

And the far-off Friulan snow;

The land and sea, the sun and shade,

And the blue even lamp-inlaid.

For this, for these, for all, O friend,

For your whole book from end to end —

For Paron Piero’s mutton-ham —

I your defaulting debtor am.

Perchance, reviving, yet may I

To your sea-paven city hie,

And in a
felze
some day yet

Light at your pipe my cigarette.

XIV

TO ANDREW LANG

Dear Andrew, with the brindled hair,

Who glory to have thrown in air,

High over arm, the trembling reed,

By Ale and Kail, by Till and Tweed:

An equal craft of hand you show

The pen to guide, the fly to throw:

I count you happy-starred; for God,

When He with inkpot and with rod

Endowed you, bade your fortune lead

For ever by the crooks of Tweed,

For ever by the woods of song

And lands that to the Muse belong;

Or if in peopled streets, or in

The abhorred pedantic sanhedrin,

It should be yours to wander, still

Airs of the morn, airs of the hill,

The plovery Forest and the seas

That break about the Hebrides,

Should follow over field and plain

And find you at the window-pane;

And you again see hill and peel,

And the bright springs gush at your heel.

So went the fiat forth, and so

Garrulous like a brook you go,

With sound of happy mirth and sheen

Of daylight — whether by the green

You fare that moment, or the grey;

Whether you dwell in March or May;

Or whether treat of reels and rods

Or of the old unhappy gods:

Still like a brook your page has shone,

And your ink sings of Helicon.

XV

ET TU IN ARCADIA VIXISTI

(TO R. A. M. S.)

In ancient tales, O friend, thy spirit dwelt;

There, from of old, thy childhood passed; and there

High expectation, high delights and deeds,

Thy fluttering heart with hope and terror moved.

And thou hast heard of yore the Blatant Beast,

And Roland’s horn, and that war-scattering shout

Of all-unarmed Achilles, ægis-crowned.

And perilous lands thou sawest, sounding shores

And seas and forests drear, island and dale

And mountain dark. For thou with Tristram rod’st

Or Bedevere, in farthest Lyonesse.

Thou hadst a booth in Samarcand, whereat

Side-looking Magians trafficked; thence, by night,

An Afreet snatched thee, and with wings upbore

Beyond the Aral Mount; or, hoping gain,

Thou, with a jar of money, didst embark

For Balsorah by sea. But chiefly thou

In that clear air took’st life; in Arcady

The haunted, land of song; and by the wells

Where most the gods frequent. There Chiron old,

In the Pelethronian antre, taught thee lore;

The plants he taught, and by the shining stars

In forests dim to steer. There hast thou seen

Immortal Pan dance secret in a glade,

And, dancing, roll his eyes; these, where they fell,

Shed glee, and through the congregated oaks

A flying horror winged; while all the earth

To the god’s pregnant footing thrilled within.

Or whiles, beside the sobbing stream, he breathed,

In his clutched pipe unformed and wizard strains

Divine yet brutal; which the forest heard,

And thou, with awe; and far upon the plain

The unthinking ploughman started and gave ear.

Now things there are that, upon him who sees,

A strong vocation lay; and strains there are

That whoso hears shall hear for evermore.

For evermore thou hear’st immortal Pan

And those melodious godheads, ever young

And ever quiring, on the mountains old.

What was this earth, child of the gods, to thee?

Forth from thy dreamland thou, a dreamer, cam’st

And in thine ears the olden music rang,

And in thy mind the doings of the dead,

And those heroic ages long forgot.

To a so fallen earth, alas! too late,

Alas! in evil days, thy steps return,

To list at noon for nightingales, to grow

A dweller on the beach till Argo come

That came long since, a lingerer by the pool

Where that desirèd angel bathes no more.

As when the Indian to Dakota comes,

Or farthest Idaho, and where he dwelt,

He with his clan, a humming city finds;

Thereon a while, amazed, he stares, and then

To right and leftward, like a questing dog,

Seeks first the ancestral altars, then the hearth

Long cold with rains, and where old terror lodged,

And where the dead: so thee undying Hope,

With all her pack, hunts screaming through the years:

Here, there, thou fleeëst; but nor here nor there

The pleasant gods abide, the glory dwells.

That, that was not Apollo, not the god.

This was not Venus, though she Venus seemed

A moment. And though fair yon river move,

She, all the way, from disenchanted fount

To seas unhallowed runs; the gods forsook

Long since her trembling rushes; from her plains

Disconsolate, long since adventure fled;

And now although the inviting river flows,

And every poplared cape, and every bend

Or willowy islet, win upon thy soul

And to thy hopeful shallop whisper speed;

Yet hope not thou at all; hope is no more;

And O, long since the golden groves are dead

The faëry cities vanished from the land!

XVI

TO W.E. HENLEY

The year runs through her phases; rain and sun,

Spring-time and summer pass; winter succeeds;

But one pale season rules the house of death.

Cold falls the imprisoned daylight; fell disease

By each lean pallet squats, and pain and sleep

Toss gaping on the pillows.

But O thou!

Uprise and take thy pipe. Bid music flow,

Strains by good thoughts attended, like the spring

The swallows follow over land and sea.

Pain sleeps at once; at once, with open eyes,

Dozing despair awakes. The shepherd sees