Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (511 page)
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Authors: ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
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
OF HIS PITIABLE TRANSFORMATION
THE SUSQUEHANNAH AND THE DELAWARE
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,
