The Project Gutenberg eBook, Songs of Travel, by Robert Louis Stevenson, Edited by Sidney Colvin This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Songs of Travel and other verses Author: Robert Louis Stevenson Editor: Sidney Colvin Release Date: October 27, 2009 [eBook #487] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONGS OF TRAVEL***
Transcribed from the 1908 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
AND OTHER VERSES
by
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
eighth impression
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1908
The following collection of verses, written at various times and places, principally after the author’s final departure from England in 1887, was sent home by him for publication some months before his death. He had tried them in several different orders and under several different titles, as “Songs and Notes of Travel,” “Posthumous Poems,” etc., and in the end left their naming and arrangement to the present editor, with the suggestion that they should be added as Book III. to future editions of “Underwoods.” This suggestion it is proposed to carry out; but in the meantime, for the benefit of those who possess “Underwoods” in its original form, it has been thought desirable to publish them separately in the present volume. They have already been included in the Edinburgh Edition of the author’s works.
S. C.
CONTENTS
i. |
The Vagabond—Give to me the life I love |
ii. |
Youth and Love: i.—Once only by the garden gate |
iii. |
Youth and Love: ii.—To the heart of youth the world is a highwayside |
iv. |
In dreams, unhappy, I behold you stand |
v. |
She rested by the Broken Brook |
vi. |
The infinite shining heavens |
vii. |
Plain as the glistering planets shine |
viii. |
To you, let snows and roses |
ix. |
Let Beauty awake in the morn from beautiful dreams |
x. |
I know not how it is with you |
xi. |
I will make you brooches and toys for your delight |
xii. |
We have loved of Yore—Berried brake and reedy island |
xiii. |
Mater Triumphans—Son of my woman’s body, you go, to the drum and fife |
xiv. |
Bright is the ring of words |
xv. |
In the highlands, in the country places |
xvi. |
Home no more home to me, wither must I wander? |
xvii. |
Winter—In rigorous hours, when down the iron lane |
xviii. |
The stormy evening closes now in vain |
xix. |
To Dr. Hake—In the belovèd hour that ushers day |
xx. |
To ---—I knew thee strong and quiet like the hills |
xxi. |
The morning drum-call on my eager ear |
xxii. |
I have trod the upward and downward slope |
xxiii. |
He hears with gladdened heart the thunder |
xxiv. |
Farewell, fair day and fading light! |
xxv. |
If this were Faith—God, if this were enough |
xxvi. |
My Wife—Trusty, dusky, vivid, true |
xxvii. |
To the Muse—Resign the rhapsody, the dream |
xxviii. |
To an Island Princess—Since long ago, a child at home |
xxix. |
To Kalakaua—The Sliver Ship, my King—that was her name |
xxx. |
To Princess Kaiulani—Forth form her land to mine she goes |
xxxi. |
To Mother Maryanne—To see the infinite pity of this place |
xxxii. |
In Memoriam E. H.—I knew a silver head was bright beyond compare |
xxxiii. |
To my Wife—Long must elapse ere you behold again |
xxxiv. |
To my Old Familiars—Do you remember—can we e’er forget? |
xxxv. |
The tropics vanish, and meseems that I |
xxxvi. |
To S. C.—I heard the pulse of the besieging sea |
xxxvii. |
The House of Tembinoka—Let us, who part like brothers, part like bards |
xxxviii. |
The Woodman—In all the grove, not stream nor bird |
xxxix. |
Tropic Rain—As the single pang of the blow, when the metal is mingled well |
xl. |
An End of Travel—Let now your soul in this substantial world |
xli. |
We uncommiserate pass into the night |
xlii. |
Sing me a song of a lad that is gone |
xliii. |
To S. R. Crockett—Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and rain are flying |
xliv. |
Evensong—The embers of the day are red |
Give to me the life I love,
Let the lave go by me,
Give
the jolly heaven above
And the byway nigh me.
Bed in
the bush with stars to see,
Bread I dip in the river—
There’s
the life for a man like me,
There’s the life for ever.
Let the blow fall soon or late,
Let what will be o’er me;
Give
the face of earth around
And the road before me.
Wealth
I seek not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All
I seek, the heaven above
And the road below me.
Or let autumn fall on me
Where afield I linger,
Silencing
the bird on tree,
Biting the blue finger.
White as
meal the frosty field—
Warm the fireside haven—
Not
to autumn will I yield,
Not to winter even!
Let the blow fall soon or late,
Let what will be o’er me;
Give
the face of earth around,
And the road before me.
Wealth
I ask not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All
I ask, the heaven above
And the road below me.
Once only by the garden gate
Our lips we joined and parted.
I
must fulfil an empty fate
And travel the uncharted.
Hail and farewell! I must arise,
Leave here the fatted
cattle,
And paint on foreign lands and skies
My Odyssey of
battle.
The untented Kosmos my abode,
I pass, a wilful stranger:
My
mistress still the open road
And the bright eyes of danger.
Come ill or well, the cross, the crown,
The rainbow or the thunder,
I
fling my soul and body down
For God to plough them under.
To the heart of youth the world is a highwayside.
Passing for ever,
he fares; and on either hand,
Deep in the gardens golden pavilions
hide,
Nestle in orchard bloom, and far on the level land
Call him
with lighted lamp in the eventide.
Thick as the stars at night when the moon is down,
Pleasures assail
him. He to his nobler fate
Fares; and but waves a hand as he
passes on,
Cries but a wayside word to her at the garden gate,
Sings
but a boyish stave and his face is gone.
In dreams, unhappy, I behold you stand
As heretofore:
The
unremembered tokens in your hand
Avail no more.
No more the morning glow, no more the grace,
Enshrines, endears.
Cold
beats the light of time upon your face
And shows your tears.
He came and went. Perchance you wept a while
And then
forgot.
Ah me! but he that left you with a smile
Forgets you
not.
She rested by the Broken Brook,
She drank of Weary Well,
She
moved beyond my lingering look,
Ah, whither none can tell!
She came, she went. In other lands,
Perchance in fairer
skies,
Her hands shall cling with other hands,
Her eyes to
other eyes.
She vanished. In the sounding town,
Will she remember too?
Will
she recall the eyes of brown
As I recall the blue?
The infinite shining heavens
Rose and I saw in the night
Uncountable
angel stars
Showering sorrow and light.
I saw them distant as heaven,
Dumb and shining and dead,
And
the idle stars of the night
Were dearer to me than bread.
Night after night in my sorrow
The stars stood over the sea,
Till
lo! I looked in the dusk
And a star had come down to me.
Plain as the glistering planets shine
When winds have cleaned the
skies,
Her love appeared, appealed for mine,
And wantoned in
her eyes.
Clear as the shining tapers burned
On Cytherea’s shrine,
Those
brimming, lustrous beauties turned,
And called and conquered mine.
The beacon-lamp that Hero lit
No fairer shone on sea,
No
plainlier summoned will and wit,
Than hers encouraged me.
I thrilled to feel her influence near,
I struck my flag at sight.
Her
starry silence smote my ear
Like sudden drums at night.
I ran as, at the cannon’s roar,
The troops the ramparts man—
As
in the holy house of yore
The willing Eli ran.
Here, lady, lo! that servant stands
You picked from passing men,
And
should you need nor heart nor hands
He bows and goes again.
To you, let snow and roses
And golden locks belong.
These
are the world’s enslavers,
Let these delight the throng.
For
her of duskier lustre
Whose favour still I wear,
The
snow be in her kirtle,
The rose be in her hair!
The hue of highland rivers
Careering, full and cool,
From
sable on to golden,
From rapid on to pool—
The
hue of heather-honey,
The hue of honey-bees,
Shall
tinge her golden shoulder,
Shall gild her tawny knees.
Let Beauty awake in the morn from beautiful dreams,
Beauty
awake from rest!
Let Beauty awake
For Beauty’s sake
In the hour when the birds awake in the brake
And the stars are bright in the west!
Let Beauty awake in the eve from the slumber of day,
Awake in
the crimson eve!
In the day’s dusk end
When the shades ascend,
Let her wake to the kiss of a tender friend
To render again and receive!
I know not how it is with you—
I love the
first and last,
The whole field of the present view,
The whole
flow of the past.
One tittle of the things that are,
Nor you should change nor I—
One
pebble in our path—one star
In all our heaven of sky.
Our lives, and every day and hour,
One symphony appear:
One
road, one garden—every flower
And every bramble dear.
I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at
morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and
me
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.
I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white
flows the river and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your
linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at
night.
And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song
for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only
you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.
Berried brake and reedy island,
Heaven below, and only heaven
above,
Through the sky’s inverted azure
Softly swam the
boat that bore our love.
Bright were your eyes as the day;
Bright ran the stream,
Bright hung the sky above.
Days
of April, airs of Eden,
How the glory died through golden hours,
And
the shining moon arising,
How the boat drew homeward filled with
flowers!
Bright were your eyes in the night:
We have lived, my love—
O, we have loved, my love.
Frost has bound our flowing river,
Snow has whitened all our
island brake,
And beside the winter fagot
Joan and Darby doze
and dream and wake.
Still, in the river of dreams
Swims the boat of love—
Hark! chimes the falling oar!
And
again in winter evens
When on firelight dreaming fancy feeds,
In
those ears of agèd lovers
Love’s own river warbles in the
reeds.
Love still the past, O my love!
We have lived of yore,
O, we have loved of yore.
Son of my woman’s body, you go, to the drum and fife,
To taste
the colour of love and the other side of life—
From out of the
dainty the rude, the strong from out of the frail,
Eternally through
the ages from the female comes the male.
The ten fingers and toes, and the shell-like nail on each,
The eyes
blind as gems and the tongue attempting speech;
Impotent hands in my
bosom, and yet they shall wield the sword!
Drugged with slumber and
milk, you wait the day of the Lord.
Infant bridegroom, uncrowned king, unanointed priest,
Soldier, lover,
explorer, I see you nuzzle the breast.
You that grope in my bosom
shall load the ladies with rings,
You, that came forth through the
doors, shall burst the doors of kings.
Bright is the ring of words
When the right man rings them,
Fair
the fall of songs
When the singer sings them.
Still
they are carolled and said—
On wings they are carried—
After
the singer is dead
And the maker buried.
Low as the singer lies
In the field of heather,
Songs
of his fashion bring
The swains together.
And when
the west is red
With the sunset embers,
The lover
lingers and sings
And the maid remembers.
In the highlands, in the country places,
Where the old plain men have
rosy faces,
And the young fair maidens
Quiet eyes;
Where
essential silence cheers and blesses,
And for ever in the
hill-recesses
Her more lovely music
Broods and dies.
O to mount again where erst I haunted;
Where the old red hills are
bird-enchanted,
And the low green meadows
Bright with sward;
And
when even dies, the million-tinted,
And the night has come, and
planets glinted,
Lo, the valley hollow
Lamp-bestarred!
O to dream, O to awake and wander
There, and with delight to take and
render,
Through the trance of silence,
Quiet breath;
Lo! for
there, among the flowers and grasses,
Only the mightier movement
sounds and passes;
Only winds and rivers,
Life and death.
Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?
Hunger my driver,
I go where I must.
Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather;
Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust.
Loved of wise men
was the shade of my roof-tree.
The true word of welcome was spoken
in the door—
Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight,
Kind folks of old, you come again no more.
Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces,
Home was home
then, my dear, happy for the child.
Fire and the windows bright
glittered on the moorland;
Song, tuneful song, built a palace in
the wild.
Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland,
Lone
stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.
Lone let it stand,
now the friends are all departed,
The kind hearts, the true
hearts, that loved the place of old.
Spring shall come, come again, calling up the moorfowl,
Spring
shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers;
Red shall
the heather bloom over hill and valley,
Soft flow the stream
through the even-flowing hours;
Fair the day shine as it shone on my
childhood—
Fair shine the day on the house with open door;
Birds
come and cry there and twitter in the chimney—
But I go for
ever and come again no more.
In rigorous hours, when down the iron lane
The redbreast looks in vain
For
hips and haws,
Lo, shining flowers upon my window-pane
The silver
pencil of the winter draws.
When all the snowy hill
And the bare woods are still;
When snipes
are silent in the frozen bogs,
And all the garden garth is whelmed in
mire,
Lo, by the hearth, the laughter of the logs—
More fair
than roses, lo, the flowers of fire!
Saranac Lake.
The stormy evening closes now in vain,
Loud wails the wind and beats
the driving rain,
While here in sheltered house
With fire-ypainted walls,
I hear the wind abroad,
I hark the calling squalls—
‘Blow, blow,’ I cry, ‘you burst
your cheeks in vain!
Blow, blow,’ I cry, ‘my love is home again!’
Yon ship you chase perchance but yesternight
Bore still the precious
freight of my delight,
That here in sheltered house
With fire-ypainted walls,
Now hears the wind abroad,
Now harks the calling squalls.
‘Blow, blow,’ I cry, ‘in vain you
rouse the sea,
My rescued sailor shares the fire with me!’
In the belovèd hour that ushers day,
In the pure dew, under the
breaking grey,
One bird, ere yet the woodland quires awake,
With
brief réveillé summons all the brake:
Chirp, chirp,
it goes; nor waits an answer long;
And that small signal fills the
grove with song.
Thus on my pipe I breathed a strain or two;
It scarce was music, but
’twas all I knew.
It was not music, for I lacked the art,
Yet
what but frozen music filled my heart?
Chirp, chirp, I went, nor hoped a nobler strain;
But
Heaven decreed I should not pipe in vain,
For, lo! not far from
there, in secret dale,
All silent, sat an ancient nightingale.
My
sparrow notes he heard; thereat awoke;
And with a tide of song his
silence broke.
I knew thee strong and quiet like the hills;
I knew thee apt to pity,
brave to endure,
In peace or war a Roman full equipt;
And just I
knew thee, like the fabled kings
Who by the loud sea-shore gave
judgment forth,
From dawn to eve, bearded and few of words.
What,
what, was I to honour thee? A child;
A youth in ardour but a
child in strength,
Who after virtue’s golden chariot-wheels
Runs
ever panting, nor attains the goal.
So thought I, and was sorrowful
at heart.
Since then my steps have visited that flood
Along whose shore the
numerous footfalls cease,
The voices and the tears of life expire.
Thither
the prints go down, the hero’s way
Trod large upon the sand,
the trembling maid’s:
Nimrod that wound his trumpet in the wood,
And
the poor, dreaming child, hunter of flowers,
That here his hunting
closes with the great:
So one and all go down, nor aught returns.
For thee, for us, the sacred river waits,
For me, the unworthy, thee,
the perfect friend;
There Blame desists, there his unfaltering dogs
He
from the chase recalls, and homeward rides;
Yet Praise and Love pass
over and go in.
So when, beside that margin, I discard
My more
than mortal weakness, and with thee
Through that still land unfearing
I advance:
If then at all we keep the touch of joy
Thou shalt
rejoice to find me altered—I,
O Felix, to behold thee still
unchanged.
The morning drum-call on my eager ear
Thrills unforgotten yet; the
morning dew
Lies yet undried along my field of noon.
But now I pause at whiles in what I do,
And count the bell, and
tremble lest I hear
(My work untrimmed) the sunset gun too soon.
I have trod the upward and the downward slope;
I have endured and
done in days before;
I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope;
And
I have lived and loved, and closed the door.
He hears with gladdened heart the thunder
Peal, and loves the
falling dew;
He knows the earth above and under—
Sits and
is content to view.
He sits beside the dying ember,
God for hope and man for friend,
Content
to see, glad to remember,
Expectant of the certain end.
Farewell, fair day and fading light!
The clay-born here, with
westward sight,
Marks the huge sun now downward soar.
Farewell.
We twain shall meet no more.
Farewell. I watch with bursting sigh
My late contemned occasion
die.
I linger useless in my tent:
Farewell, fair day, so foully
spent!
Farewell, fair day. If any God
At all consider this poor clod,
He
who the fair occasion sent
Prepared and placed the impediment.
Let him diviner vengeance take—
Give me to sleep, give me to
wake
Girded and shod, and bid me play
The hero in the coming day!
God, if this were enough,
That I see things bare to the buff
And
up to the buttocks in mire;
That I ask nor hope nor hire,
Nut in
the husk,
Nor dawn beyond the dusk,
Nor life beyond death:
God,
if this were faith?
Having felt thy wind in my face
Spit sorrow and disgrace,
Having
seen thine evil doom
In Golgotha and Khartoum,
And the brutes, the
work of thine hands,
Fill with injustice lands
And stain with
blood the sea:
If still in my veins the glee
Of the black night
and the sun
And the lost battle, run:
If, an adept,
The
iniquitous lists I still accept
With joy, and joy to endure and be
withstood,
And still to battle and perish for a dream of good:
God,
if that were enough?
If to feel, in the ink of the slough,
And the sink of the mire,
Veins
of glory and fire
Run through and transpierce and transpire,
And a
secret purpose of glory in every part,
And the answering glory of
battle fill my heart;
To thrill with the joy of girded men
To go
on for ever and fail and go on again,
And be mauled to the earth and
arise,
And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen with
the eyes:
With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night
That
somehow the right is the right
And the smooth shall bloom from the
rough:
Lord, if that were enough?
Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true
and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate.
Honour, anger, valour, fire;
A love that life could never tire,
Death
quench or evil stir,
The mighty master
Gave to her.
Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life,
Heart-whole
and soul-free
The august father
Gave to me.
Resign the rhapsody, the dream,
To men of larger reach;
Be
ours the quest of a plain theme,
The piety of speech.
As monkish scribes from morning break
Toiled till the close of
light,
Nor thought a day too long to make
One line or letter
bright:
We also with an ardent mind,
Time, wealth, and fame forgot,
Our
glory in our patience find
And skim, and skim the pot:
Till last, when round the house we hear
The evensong of birds,
One
corner of blue heaven appear
In our clear well of words.
Leave, leave it then, muse of my heart!
Sans finish and sans frame,
Leave
unadorned by needless art
The picture as it came.
Since long ago, a child at home,
I read and longed to rise and roam,
Where’er
I went, whate’er I willed,
One promised land my fancy filled.
Hence
the long roads my home I made;
Tossed much in ships; have often laid
Below
the uncurtained sky my head,
Rain-deluged and wind-buffeted:
And
many a thousand hills I crossed
And corners turned—Love’s labour lost,
Till,
Lady, to your isle of sun
I came, not hoping; and, like one
Snatched
out of blindness, rubbed my eyes,
And hailed my promised land with
cries.
Yes, Lady, here I was at last;
Here found I all I had forecast:
The
long roll of the sapphire sea
That keeps the land’s virginity;
The
stalwart giants of the wood
Laden with toys and flowers and food;
The
precious forest pouring out
To compass the whole town about;
The
town itself with streets of lawn,
Loved of the moon, blessed by the
dawn,
Where the brown children all the day
Keep up a ceaseless
noise of play,
Play in the sun, play in the rain,
Nor ever quarrel
or complain;—
And late at night, in the woods of fruit,
Hark!
do you hear the passing flute?
I threw one look to either hand,
And knew I was in Fairyland.
And
yet one point of being so
I lacked. For, Lady (as you know),
Whoever
by his might of hand,
Won entrance into Fairyland,
Found always
with admiring eyes
A Fairy princess kind and wise.
It was not long
I waited; soon
Upon my threshold, in broad noon,
Gracious and
helpful, wise and good,
The Fairy Princess Moë stood.
[44]
Tantira, Tahiti, Nov. 5, 1888.
The Silver Ship, my King—that was her name
In the bright
islands whence your fathers came
[45]—
The Silver Ship,
at rest from winds and tides,
Below your palace in your harbour rides:
And
the seafarers, sitting safe on shore,
Like eager merchants count
their treasures o’er.
One gift they find, one strange and
lovely thing,
Now doubly precious since it pleased a king.
The right, my liege, is ancient as the lyre
For bards to give to
kings what kings admire.
’Tis mine to offer for Apollo’s sake;
And
since the gift is fitting, yours to take.
To golden hands the golden
pearl I bring:
The ocean jewel to the island king.
Honolulu, Feb. 3, 1889.
[Written in April to Kaiulani in the April of her age; and at Waikiki, within easy walk of Kaiulani’s banyan! When she comes to my land and her father’s, and the rain beats upon the window (as I fear it will), let her look at this page; it will be like a weed gathered and pressed at home; and she will remember her own islands, and the shadow of the mighty tree; and she will hear the peacocks screaming in the dusk and the wind blowing in the palms; and she will think of her father sitting there alone.—R. L. S.]
Forth from her land to mine she goes,
The island maid, the island
rose,
Light of heart and bright of face:
The daughter of a double
race.
Her islands here, in Southern sun,
Shall mourn their Kaiulani gone,
And
I, in her dear banyan shade,
Look vainly for my little maid.
But our Scots islands far away
Shall glitter with unwonted day,
And
cast for once their tempests by
To smile in Kaiulani’s eye.
Honolulu.
To see the infinite pity of this place,
The mangled limb, the
devastated face,
The innocent sufferer smiling at the rod—
A
fool were tempted to deny his God.
He sees, he shrinks. But if he
gaze again,
Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!
He marks
the sisters on the mournful shores;
And even a fool is silent and
adores.
Guest House, Kalawao, Molokai.
I knew a silver head was bright beyond compare,
I knew a queen of
toil with a crown of silver hair.
Garland of valour and sorrow, of
beauty and renown,
Life, that honours the brave, crowned her himself
with the crown.
The beauties of youth are frail, but this was a jewel of age.
Life,
that delights in the brave, gave it himself for a gage.
Fair was the
crown to behold, and beauty its poorest part—
At once the scar
of the wound and the order pinned on the heart.
The beauties of man are frail, and the silver lies in the dust,
And
the queen that we call to mind sleeps with the brave and the just;
Sleeps
with the weary at length; but, honoured and ever fair,
Shines in the
eye of the mind the crown of the silver hair.
Honolulu.
Long must elapse ere you behold again
Green forest frame the entry of
the lane—
The wild lane with the bramble and the brier,
The
year-old cart-tracks perfect in the mire,
The wayside smoke,
perchance, the dwarfish huts,
And ramblers’ donkey drinking from the
ruts:—
Long ere you trace how deviously it leads,
Back from
man’s chimneys and the bleating meads
To the woodland shadow,
to the sylvan hush,
When but the brooklet chuckles in the brush—
Back
from the sun and bustle of the vale
To where the great voice of the
nightingale
Fills all the forest like a single room,
And all the
banks smell of the golden broom;
So wander on until the eve descends.
And
back returning to your firelit friends,
You see the rosy sun,
despoiled of light,
Hung, caught in thickets, like a schoolboy’s kite.
Here from the sea the unfruitful sun shall rise,
Bathe the bare deck
and blind the unshielded eyes;
The allotted hours aloft shall wheel
in vain
And in the unpregnant ocean plunge again.
Assault of
squalls that mock the watchful guard,
And pluck the bursting canvas
from the yard,
And senseless clamour of the calm, at night
Must
mar your slumbers. By the plunging light,
In beetle-haunted,
most unwomanly bower
Of the wild-swerving cabin, hour by hour . . .
Schooner ‘Equator.’
Do you remember—can we e’er forget?—
How, in the
coiled-perplexities of youth,
In our wild climate, in our scowling
town,
We gloomed and shivered, sorrowed, sobbed and feared?
The
belching winter wind, the missile rain,
The rare and welcome silence
of the snows,
The laggard morn, the haggard day, the night,
The
grimy spell of the nocturnal town,
Do you remember?—Ah, could one
forget!
As when the fevered sick that all night long
Listed the wind intone,
and hear at last
The ever-welcome voice of chanticleer
Sing in the
bitter hour before the dawn,—
With sudden ardour, these desire
the day:
So sang in the gloom of youth the bird of hope;
So we,
exulting, hearkened and desired.
For lo! as in the palace porch of
life
We huddled with chimeras, from within—
How sweet to
hear!—the music swelled and fell,
And through the breach of the
revolving doors
What dreams of splendour blinded us and fled!
I have since then contended and rejoiced;
Amid the glories of the
house of life
Profoundly entered, and the shrine beheld:
Yet when
the lamp from my expiring eyes
Shall dwindle and recede, the voice of
love
Fall insignificant on my closing ears,
What sound shall come
but the old cry of the wind
In our inclement city? what return
But
the image of the emptiness of youth,
Filled with the sound of
footsteps and that voice
Of discontent and rapture and despair?
So,
as in darkness, from the magic lamp,
The momentary pictures gleam and
fade
And perish, and the night resurges—these
Shall I
remember, and then all forget.
Apemama.
The tropics vanish, and meseems that I,
From Halkerside, from topmost
Allermuir,
Or steep Caerketton, dreaming gaze again.
Far set in
fields and woods, the town I see
Spring gallant from the shallows of
her smoke,
Cragged, spired, and turreted, her virgin fort
Beflagged.
About, on seaward-drooping hills,
New folds of city glitter. Last,
the Forth
Wheels ample waters set with sacred isles,
And populous
Fife smokes with a score of towns.
There, on the sunny frontage of a hill,
Hard by the house of kings,
repose the dead,
My dead, the ready and the strong of word.
Their
works, the salt-encrusted, still survive;
The sea bombards their
founded towers; the night
Thrills pierced with their strong lamps.
The artificers,
One after one, here in this grated cell,
Where the
rain erases, and the rust consumes,
Fell upon lasting silence.
Continents
And continental oceans intervene;
A sea uncharted, on a
lampless isle,
Environs and confines their wandering child
In
vain. The voice of generations dead
Summons me, sitting
distant, to arise,
My numerous footsteps nimbly to retrace,
And,
all mutation over, stretch me down
In that denoted city of the dead.
Apemama.
I heard the pulse of the besieging sea
Throb far away all night. I
heard the wind
Fly crying and convulse tumultuous palms.
I rose
and strolled. The isle was all bright sand,
And flailing fans
and shadows of the palm;
The heaven all moon and wind and the blind
vault;
The keenest planet slain, for Venus slept.
The king, my
neighbour, with his host of wives,
Slept in the precinct of the
palisade;
Where single, in the wind, under the moon,
Among the
slumbering cabins, blazed a fire,
Sole street-lamp and the only
sentinel.
To other lands and nights my fancy turned—
To
London first, and chiefly to your house,
The many-pillared and the
well-beloved.
There yearning fancy lighted; there again
In the
upper room I lay, and heard far off
The unsleeping city murmur like a
shell;
The muffled tramp of the Museum guard
Once more went by me;
I beheld again
Lamps vainly brighten the dispeopled street;
Again
I longed for the returning morn,
The awaking traffic, the bestirring
birds,
The consentaneous trill of tiny song
That weaves round
monumental cornices
A passing charm of beauty. Most of all,
For
your light foot I wearied, and your knock
That was the glad réveillé
of my day.
Lo, now, when to your task in the great house
At
morning through the portico you pass,
One moment glance, where by the
pillared wall
Far-voyaging island gods, begrimed with smoke,
Sit
now unworshipped, the rude monument
Of faiths forgot and races
undivined:
Sit now disconsolate, remembering well
The priest, the
victim, and the songful crowd,
The blaze of the blue noon, and that
huge voice,
Incessant, of the breakers on the shore.
As far as
these from their ancestral shrine,
So far, so foreign, your divided
friends
Wander, estranged in body, not in mind.
Apemama.
[At my departure from the island of Apemama, for which you will look in vain in most atlases, the King and I agreed, since we both set up to be in the poetical way, that we should celebrate our separation in verse. Whether or not his Majesty has been true to his bargain, the laggard posts of the Pacific may perhaps inform me in six months, perhaps not before a year. The following lines represent my part of the contract, and it is hoped, by their pictures of strange manners, they may entertain a civilised audience. Nothing throughout has been invented or exaggerated; the lady herein referred to as the author’s muse has confined herself to stringing into rhyme facts or legends that I saw or heard during two months’ residence upon the island.—R. L. S.]
ENVOI
Let 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 call
The
prefect of the singers, and to him,
Listening devout,
your valedictory verse
Deliver; 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 arouse
And toss the bosky ringlets from his
brows,
The while, our bond to implement,
My muse relates and
praises his descent.
I
Bride of the shark, her valour first I sing
Who 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 embrace
Conceived the virtues of a
stronger race.
II
Her 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.
III
His sons, the brothers twain, I sing,
Of whom the elder reigned a
King.
No Childeric he, yet much declined
From his rude sire’s
imperious mind,
Until his day came when he died,
He lived, he
reigned, he versified.
But chiefly him I celebrate
That 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 part
In
lawful and unlawful art.
His soldiers with emboldened ears
Heard
him laugh among the spears.
He could deduce from age to age
The
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 raise
The strong,
suffumigating blaze,
Or knot the wizard leaf: none more,
Upon the
untrodden windward shore
Of 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
head
He ruled, commanded, charmed, and led,
And thus in virtue and
in might
Towered 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.
IV
My Tembinok’ from men like these
Inherited 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 shore
Augments his treasury of lore,
Eager
in age as erst in youth
To catch an art, to learn a truth,
To
paint on the internal page
A 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 day
He suffers; he
records the while
The 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 boat
He marks; and only hears remote,
Where
thrones and fortunes rise and reel,
The thunder of the turning wheel.
V
For the unexpected tears he shed
At my departing, may his lion head
Not
whiten, his revolving years
No fresh occasion minister of tears;
At
book or cards, at work or sport,
Him may the breeze across the palace
court
For ever fan; and swelling near
For ever the loud song
divert his ear.
Schooner ‘Equator,’ at Sea.
In all the grove, nor stream nor bird
Nor 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 trees
Groped upward in the gaps. The
green
Inarboured talus and ravine
By fathoms. By the multitude
The
rugged columns of the wood
And 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 arcade
Impatient 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 multitude
Nodded and brooded, bloomed and
dreamed,
Unmeaning, undivined. It seemed
No other art, no
hope, they knew,
Than clutch the earth and seek the blue.
’Mid
vegetable king and priest
And stripling, I (the only beast)
Was at
the beast’s work, killing; hewed
The stubborn roots across,
bestrewed
The glebe with the dislustred leaves,
And bade the
saplings fall in sheaves;
Bursting across the tangled math
A ruin
that I called a path,
A Golgotha that, later on,
When rains had
watered, and suns shone,
And seeds enriched the place, should bear
And
be called garden. Here and there,
I spied and plucked by the
green hair
A 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 mud
Brier and fern strove to the blood:
The
hooked liana in his gin
Noosed 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 soil
Like
frightened demons: with despair
Competing branches pushed for air.
Green
conquerors from overhead
Bestrode the bodies of their dead:
The
Caesars of the sylvan 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 ring
Two chartered wrestlers strain and cling;
Dumb
as by yellow Hooghly’s side
The suffocating captives died;
So
hushed the woodland warfare goes
Unceasing; and the silent foes
Grapple
and smother, strain and clasp
Without 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 life
Ring 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 howes 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.
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 enbalmèd 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.
[44] This is the same Princess Moë whose charms of person and disposition have been recorded by the late Lord Pembroke in South Sea Bubbles, and by M. Pierre Loti in the Mariage de Loti.
[45] The yacht Casco had been so called by the people of Fakarava in the Paumotus.
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