Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (498 page)

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, .

XXVIII

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 tugged 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.

XXIX

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.

XXX

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 Jaques

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.

XXXII

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.

XXXIII

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!

XXXIV

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.

XXXV

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 night 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 and blind, I may remark, are pronounced to rhyme with the preterite of grin.

I

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 speir; an’ I, his mou’ to steik:

“No’ bein’ fit to write in Greek,

I wrote in Lallan,

Dear to my heart as the peat-reek,

Auld as Tantallon.

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

My puir auld sangs lie a’ their lane,

Their sense, that aince was braw an’ plain,

Tint a’thegither,

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.”

II

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 a while 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 thegither;

The wild bees seek the gairden raws,

Weariet wi’ heather.

Or in the gloamin’ douce an’ grey

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 —