Robert Louis Stevenson

“ Beside the bridge at Grez.
So may that love forever hold
In life an equal pace;
So may that love grow never old,
But, clear and pure and fountain-cold,
Go on from grace to grace.
IT’S FORTH ACROSS THE ROARING FOAM It’s forth across the roaring foam, and on towards the west,
It’s many a lonely league from home, o’er many a mountain crest,
From where the dogs of Scotland call the sheep around the fold,
To where the flags are flying beside the Gates of Gold.
Where all the deep-sea galleons ride that come to bring the corn,
Where falls the fog at eventide and blows the breeze at morn ”

“ With cries approach, with cries behold the gulph,
The Unvaulted; as two great eagles that do wheel in air
Above a mountain, and with screams confer,
Far heard athwart the cedars.
⁠Yet the years
Shall bring us ever nearer; day by day
Endearing, week by week, till death at last
Dissolve that long divorce. By faith we love,
Not knowledge; and by faith, though far removed,
Dwell as in perfect nearness, heart to heart.
⁠We but excuse
Those things we merely are; and to our souls
A brave deception cherish.
So from unhappy war a man returns
Unfearing, or the seaman from the deep ”

“ And kept hands with hoary policy in marriage-bed and pew;
Now I know the false and true,
For the earnest sun looks through,
And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew.
Now the hedged meads renew
Rustic odour, smiling hue,
And the clean air shines and tinkles as the world goes wheeling through;
p. 53And my heart springs up anew,
Bright and confident and true,
And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew.
LOVE, WHAT IS LOVE? Love—what is love? A great and aching heart;
Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair.
Life—what is life? ”

“ Tho' where you learned your music, not the God of song can tell,
⁠For you pipe the open highway and the sea.
piper, lightly footing, lightly piping on your way,
⁠Tho' your music thrills and pierces far and near,
I tell you you had better pipe to someone else to-day,
⁠For you cannot pipe my fancy from my dear.
You sound the note of travel through the hamlet and the town;
⁠You would lure the holy angels from on high;
And not a man can hear you, but he throws the hammer down
⁠And is off to see the countries ere he die. ”

“ Hear, thro’ all taunt and scornful laughter,
Through all defeat and all regret,
The stronger swimmers coming after.
SWALLOWS TRAVEL TO AND FRO Swallows travel to and fro,
And the great winds come and go,
And the steady breezes blow,
Bearing perfume, bearing love.
Breezes hasten, swallows fly,
Towered clouds forever ply,
And at noonday, you and I
See the same sunshine above.
Dew and rain fall everywhere,
Harvests ripen, flowers are fair,
And the whole round earth is bare
To the moonshine and the sun ”

“ Charm us in age as they charmed in childhood.
Fair ones, beyond all numerability,
Beam from the palace, beam on humanity,
Bright-eyed, in truth, yet soul-less houris
Offering pleasure and only pleasure.
Thus they, the venal Muses Arabian,
Unlike, indeed, the nobler divinities,
Greek Gods or old time-honoured muses,
Easily proffer unloved caresses.
Lost, lost, the man who mindeth the minstrelsy;
Since still, in sandy, glittering pleasances,
Cold, stony fruits, gem-like but quite in-
Edible, flatter and wholly starve him. ”

“ Shall they, with upright keels, pass in before
Whom easy Taste, the golden pilot, steered.
II.
So shall this book wax like unto a well,
Fairy with mirrored ilowers about the brim,
Or like some tarn that wailing curlews skim,
Glassing the sallow uplands or brown fell;
And so, as men go down into a dell
(Weary with noon) to find relief and shade,
When on the uneasy sick-bed we are laid,
We shall go down into thy book, and tell
The leaves, once blank, to build again for us
Old summer dead and ruined, and the time
Of later autumn with the corn in stook. ”

“ MAN SAILS THE DEEP AWHILE
Man sails the deep awhile;
⁠Loud runs the roaring tide;
⁠The seas are wild and wide;
O'er many a salt, o'er many a desert mile,
⁠The unchained breakers ride,
⁠The quivering stars beguile.
Hope bears the sole command;
⁠Hope, with unshaken eyes,
⁠Sees flaw and storm arise;
Hope, the good steersman, with unwearying hand,
⁠Steers, under changing skies,
⁠Unchanged toward the land.
O wind that bravely blows! ”

“ I, O Melampus, halting, stand at gaze:
⁠I, liberated, look abroad on life,
Love, and distress, and dusty travelling ways,
⁠The steersman's helm, the surgeon's helpful knife,
On the lone ploughman's earth-upturning share,
⁠The revelry of cities and the sound
Of seas, and mountain-tops aloof in air,
And of the circling earth the unsupported round:
I, looking, wonder: I, intent, adore ”

“ Turned thro' the casement toward the westering skies;
Or as untamed Elijah, that red brand
Among the starry prophets; or that band
And company of Faithful sanctities
Who in all times, when persecutions rise,
Cherish forgotten creeds with fostering hand:
Such do ye seem to me, light-hearted crew,
O turned to friendly arts with all your will,
That keep a little chapel sacred still,
One rood of Holy-land in this bleak earth
Sequestered still (our homage surely due!) ”

“ Springs in the favouring Summer air, and grows,
And waxes strong; and wlien the Summer goes,
⁠Remains, a perfect tree.
Joy she may give and take again,
Joy she may take and leave us pain.
⁠O Love, and what care we?
For one thing thou hast given, O Love, one thing
⁠Is ours that nothing can remove;
And as the King discrowned is still a King,
⁠The unhappy lover still preserves his love. ”

“ The whole year's sweat and study,
⁠And the whole year's sowing time,
Comes now to the perfect harvest,
⁠And ripens now into rhyme.
For we that sow in the Autumn,
⁠We reap our grain in the Spring,
And we that go sowing and weeping
⁠Return to reap and sing. ”

“ Still sounds toward me float;
I hear the bird’s small note,
Sheep from the far sheepcote,
And lowing steers.
For lo! the war is done,
Lo, now the battle won,
The trumpets still.
The shepherd’s slender strain,
The country sounds again
Awake in wood and plain,
On haugh and hill.
Loud wars and loud loves cease.
I welcome my release;
And hail once more
Free foot and way world-wide.
And oft at eventide
Light love to talk beside
The hostel door. ”

“ And waited, till before me she dropped dead.
⁠O golden bird in these dove-coloured skies
⁠How long I sought, how long with wearied eyes
I sought, O bird, the promise of thy flight!
⁠And now the morn has dawned, the morn has died,
The day has come and gone; and once more night
⁠About my lone life settles, wild and wide. ”

“ Her on whose pyre the smoke still hovering waits;
Her whom the greedy and unequal fates
On the sixth dawning of her natal day,
My child-love and my playmate—snatcht away.
AD PISCATOREM For these are sacred fishes all
Who know that lord that is the lord of all;
Come to the brim and nose the friendly hand
That sways and can beshadow all the land. ”

“ Ye have the power, if but ye had the will,
⁠Strong-smitten steady chords in sequence grand,
⁠To bear me forth into that tranquil land
Where good is no more ravelled up with ill;
Where she and I, remote upon some hill
⁠Or by some quiet river's windless strand,
⁠May live, and love, and wander hand in hand,
And follow nature simply, and be still. ”

“ But the loud stream of men day after day
And great dust columns of the common way
Between them grew and grew:
And he and she for evermore might yearn,
But to the spring the rivulets not return
Nor to the bosom comes the child again.
And he (O may we fancy so!) ”

“ And sings the songs of the highways.
So when the earth is alive with gods,
And the lusty ploughman breaks the sod,
⁠And the grass sings in the meadows,
⁠And the flowers smile in the shadows,
⁠Sits my heart at ease,
⁠Hearing the song of the leas,
Singing the songs of the meadows. ”

“ Up from the laboured plains, and up
⁠From low sea-levels, we arise
To drink of that diviner cup
⁠The rarer air, the clearer skies;
For, as the great, old, godly King
⁠From mankind's turbid valley cries,
So all we mountain-lovers sing:
⁠I to the hills will lift mine eyes. ”

“ My earliest thought of love, and Spring's
⁠First puff of perfume mingled.
In my still heart the thoughts awoke,
⁠Came lone by lone together—
Say, birds and Sun and Spring, is Love
⁠A mere affair of weather? ”

“ Say, love, do you hear me,
⁠Hear my sonnets ring?
Over the high, brown mountain,
⁠Love, do you hear me sing?
By highway, love, and byway
⁠The snows succeed the rose.
Over the high, brown mountain
⁠The wind of winter blows. ”

“ FEAR NOT, DEAR FRIEND, BUT FREELY LIVE YOUR DAYS
Fear not, dear friend, but freely live your days
⁠Though lesser lives should suffer. Such am I,
⁠A lesser life, that what is his of sky
Gladly would give for you, and what of praise. ”

“ How I could shake your faith, ye fools,
⁠If but I thought it worth the shaking.
I see, and pity you; and then
⁠Go, casting off the idle pity,
In search of better, braver men,
⁠My own way freely through the city. ”

“ The nations snoring far and near.
So peacefully their rest they take,
It seems we are the first awake!
—Strong heart! this is no royal way,
A thousand cross-roads seek the day;
And, hid from us, to left and right,
A thousand seekers seek the light.
AWAY WITH FUNERAL MUSIC Away with funeral music—set
The pipe to powerful lips—
The cup of life’s for him that drinks
And not for him that sips.
p. 21TO SYDNEY Not thine where marble-still and white
Old statues share the tempered light
And mock the uneven modern flight,
But in the stream
Of daily sorrow and delight
To seek a theme. ”

“ You leaned to me, I leaned to you,
⁠Our course was smooth as flight—
We steered—a heel-touch to the left,
⁠A heel-touch to the right.
We swung our way through flying men,
⁠Your hand lay fast in mine:
We saw the shifting crowd dispart,
⁠The level ice-reach shine. ”

“ They joy to shed themselves abroad;
And tree and flower and grass and sod
Thrill and leap and live and sing
With silent voices in the Spring.
Hence I not fear to yield my breath,
Since all is still unchanged by death ”

“ Gone are the quiet twilight dreams that I
Loved, as all men have loved them; gone!
I have great dreams, and still they stir my soul on high—
Dreams of the knight's stout heart and tempered will.
Not in Elysian lands they take their way ”

“ As swift to love. I did become at once
Thine wholly, thine unalterably, thine
In honourable service, pure intent,
Steadfast excess of love and laughing care:
And as she was, so am, and so shall be. ”

“ Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;
Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shore
Where neither piping bird nor peeping dawn
Disturbs the eternal sleep,
But in the stillness far withdrawn
Our dreamless rest for evermore we keep. ”

“ Thee, heart of mine, I greet.
⁠In what hard mountain pass
⁠Striv'st thou? In what importunate morass
Sink now thy weary feet?
Thou run'st a hopeless race
⁠To win despair. No crown
⁠Awaits success, but leaden gods look down
On thee, with evil face. ”

“ Supports our halting will toward the best.
Ah! what to us the barren after years
May bring of joy or sorrow, who can tell?
O, knowing not, who cares? It may be well
That we shall find old pleasures and old fears,
And our remembered childhood seen thro' tears,
The best of Heaven and the worst of Hell. ”

“ Lullaby, darling; your mother is watching you; she'll be your guardian and shield.
Lullaby, slumber, my darling, till morning be bright upon mountain and field.
Long, long the shadows fall.
All white and smooth at home your little bed is laid. ”

“ It's time to man the dingy and to row!
⁠It's lay your hand in mine
⁠And it's empty down the wine,
And it's drain a health to death before we go!
⁠To death, my lads, we sail;
⁠And it's death that blows the gale
And death that holds the tiller as we ride. ”

“ Singers should sing with such a goodly cheer
⁠That the bare listening should make strong like wine,
At this unruly time of year,
⁠The Feast of Valentine.
We do not now parade our "oughts"
⁠And "shoulds" and motives and beliefs in God.
Their life lies all indoors; sad thoughts
⁠Must keep the house, while gay thoughts go abroad,
Within we hold the wake for hopes deceased ”

“ Come, my little children, here are songs for you;
Some are short and some are long, and all, all are new.
You must learn to sing them very small and clear,
Very true to time and tune and pleasing to the ear. ”

“ And destined still to be a sun
⁠Through every dark and rainy mood:—
She, as they told me, far had come,
⁠By sea and land, o'er many a rood:—
Admired by all, beloved by some,
⁠She was yourself, I understood. ”

“ LOVE'S VICISSITUDES
As Love and Hope together
⁠Walk by me for a while,
Link-armed the ways they travel
⁠For many a pleasant mile—
Link-armed and dumb they travel,
⁠They sing not, but they smile. ”

“ That from the mountain calls afar,
That lures a vessel from a star,
And with a still, aerial sound
Makes all the earth enchanted ground.
Love, and the love of life and act
Dance, live and sing through all our furrowed tract ”