Robert Louis Stevenson

“ My husband has told me of the terrors of the night, when he dared not go to sleep lest he should wake amid the flames of eternal torment, and how he would be taken from his bed in the morning unrefreshed, feverish, and ill, but rejoicing that he had gained at least a respite from what he believed to be his just doom; Cummy, kindly soul, never dreaming of the dire effect of her religious training. ”

“ Sings, like an angry wasp, in the straining grass
Sings and whistles;
And the hurried flow of rain
Scourges my face and passes.
Behind me, clustered together, the rain-wet roofs of the town
Shine, and the light vane shines as it veers
In the long pale finger of sun that hurries across them to me.
The fresh salt air is keen in my nostrils,
And far down the shining sand
Foam and thunder
And take the shape of the bay in eager mirth
The white-head hungry billows.
The earth shakes
As the semicircle of waters
Stoops and casts itself down ”

“ When I last saw Henrietta, a few years ago, we both knew that she had but a little while to live, but the undaunted light in her eyes seemed to say:—
"Must we to bed, indeed? Well then
Let us arise and go like men." ”

“ And drunk too deep perchance the lotus of the air,
Beside the Susquehanna and along the Delaware.
⁠Unweary, God me yet shall bring
⁠To lands of brighter air,
⁠Where I, now half a king,
⁠Shall with enfranchised spirit loudlier sing,
And wear a bolder front than that which now I wear
Beside the Susquehanna and along the Delaware. ”

“ Here gradually it floods
The wooded valleys and the weeds
And the still smokeless cities.
The cocks crow up at the farms;
The sick man's spirit is glad;
The watch treads brisker about the dew-wet deck ”

“ The chill blind circle of night
Watching him through the panes.
This is his country's guardian,
The outmost sentry of peace.
This is the man
Who gives up that is lovely in living
For the means to live. ”

“ The still, hot night was tempered so.
And ever, from the carven bed,
⁠She watched the labour of the men;
And saw the band of moonlight spread,
⁠Leap up upon her feet and then
Leap down upon the floor again ”

“ In sunny pastures high and low;
The treble pipes not otherwise
Sing daily under sunny skies
In Arcady the dear;
And you who have been there before,
And love that country evermore,
May not disdain to hear. ”

“ That from these exiguous bounds,
I have dug a printed book
And a cheque for twenty pounds?
Thus do those who trust the Lord
Go rejoicing on their way
And receive a great reward
For having been so kind as lay. ”

“ But, in the path we mortals tread,
Got some few, trifling steps ahead,
⁠And nearer to the end,
So that you, too, once past the bend,
Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend
⁠You fancy dead.
4
Push gayly on, strong heart! The while
You travel forward mile by mile,
He loiters with a backward smile
⁠Till you can overtake,
And strains his eyes, to search his wake,
Or whistling, as he sees you through the brake,
⁠Waits on a stile. ”

“ To the true life together bend our mind,
And take a furlough from the falser kind,
No rich saloon, nor palace of the great
Nor suit at law should trouble our estate;
On no vainglorious statues should we look. ”

“ White-robed among the sunshine and the statues
And the fair porticos of carven marble—
Fond of olives and dry sherry,
Good tobacco and clever talk with my fellows,
Free from inordinate cravings.
Why would you hurry me, O evangelist,
You with the bands and the shilling packet of tracts
Greatly reduced when taken for distribution?
Why do you taunt my progress,
O green-spectacled Wordsworth! in beautiful verses,
You, the elderly poet?
So I shall travel forward
Step by step with the rest of my race,
In time, if death should spare me,
I shall come on to a farther stage. ”

“ Leave you something of himself,
Something dear and kind and true,
That will stay and talk with you.
They shall go, but one and all
Leave their faces on the wall,
Leave brave words of hope and love
Legendwise inscribed above. ”

“ She had a great feeling for poetry and the music of words, and can still tell a story with much dramatic effect. When the sick child turned from his food and would not eat, Cummy could usually persuade him to another effort by saying, "It is made from the finest of the wheat." The biblical words "shew bread" might also be used when everything else failed, but I fancy Cummy was chary of quoting from the sacred book unless the occasion were very serious indeed.
Had my husband's infancy been passed in the fresh air and sunshine of a milder climate, his whole life might have been different. ”

“ O, sure you're the flower and quintessence of dames.
Eructavit cor meum.
Though oft I've been touched by the volatile dart
To none have I grovelled but Adela Chart.
There are passable ladies, no question, in art—
But where is the marrow of Adela Chart? ”

“ In vain by many an artful swivel
Lug in my meaning by degrees;
I'm sure to hear my Henley cavil;
And grovelling prostrate on my knees,
Devote his body to the seas,
His correspondence to the devil! ”

“ They had at first a human air
In coats and flannel underwear.
They rose and walked upon their feet
And filled their bellies full of meat,
Then wiped their lips when they had done—
But they were ogres every one. ”

“ Wraps me about from the turmoil and clamour of life.
I stand apart from living,
Apart and holy I stand,
In my new-gained growth of idleness, I stand,
As stood the Shekinah of yore in the holy of holies. ”

“ Their syllables all counted right
⁠Their rhymes each in its place,
Like birthday children, at the door
⁠They wait to see your face.
Rise, lady, rise and let them in;
⁠Fresh from the fairy shore,
They bring you things you wish to have,
⁠Each in its pinafore. ”

“ To some old geologic time
With Saurians wallowing in fat slime,
Before the rivers and the rains
Had fashioned, and made fair with Plains
And shadowy places fresh with flowers,
This green and quiet world of ours. ”

“ Do wasps bring honey. Wherefore now
⁠Should Locker ask a verse from me?
Martial, perchance,—but he is dead,
⁠And Herrick now must rhyme no more;
Still burning with the muse, they tread
⁠ (And arm in arm) the shadowy shore. ”

“ Several Alps indifferent high;
⁠The snow's inviolable abode;
Eleven English parsons, all
⁠Entirely inoffensive; four
True human beings—what I call
⁠Human—the deuce a cipher more;
A climate of surprising worth ”

“ The terrifying aspects of religion were generally confined to the night hours. In the daytime Cummy, with her contagious gayety and unceasing inventions for the amusement of her nursling, made the time fly on wings. ”

“ The frog among the rushes
⁠Sits singing in the blue.
By 'r la'kin! but these tushes
⁠Are wearisome to do!
The task entirely crushes
⁠The spirit of the bard:
God pity him who tushes—
⁠His task is very hard. ”

“ Where are now the country lovers whom you trembled to be near—
⁠Who, with shy advances, in the falling eventide,
Grasped thee tighter at your fingers, whispered lowlier in your ear,
⁠On a green beside the river ere you died? ”

“ Encompassed during one life's span;
⁠An empire built, kingdom born.
⁠And straightway men sound man's own horn.
The human brain's a wondrous work,
⁠So chant the sages and the deans—
⁠Those thought and labour go-betweens,
Who ever life's deep mysteries shirk. ”

“ A few months later, in Hyères, the games of his childhood served in a new way again to interest and amuse him. After a terrible hemorrhage, he fell a victim to sciatica, and at the same time was temporarily blind from an attack of ophthalmia. Not only was all light excluded from the room where he lay, but on account of the hemorrhage his right arm was closely bound to his side. Most men would have succumbed to the force of circumstances, but he, undismayed, determined to circumvent the fate he would not accept. ”

“ Of things forgotten, and from thence bring up
Gold of old song, and diamonds of dead speech,
The scholar, and the angler, and the friend
Of the pale past, this unremembered tale
Restore, and this dead author re-inspire ”

“ There is something radically wrong in a generation that does not know how to play." I imagine, however, that it requires something almost like genius to play as he played, and that it was hardly fair to judge our little guests from the plane of his own childhood. ”

“ If any deed be done, if any fire
Live in the imperfect page, the praise be thine!
↑ These lines are found in the manuscript of Weir of Hermiston. They suggest a projected dedication of the book to Mrs. Stevenson. ”

“ Judged by the standards of to-day, the methods of the medical profession were inconceivably harsh and ignorant, and it seems a miracle that my husband should have survived their treatment and grown to manhood. ”

“ Spied her mistake, nor sooner spied than ran
To remedy; and with the greater fan,
In gracious better thought, equipped the guest.
From ill to well, from better on to best,
Arts move; the homely, like the plastic kind ”

“ Each, a perpetual caress
To tell you of my tenderness.
Let—when at morning as ye rise
The golden topaz takes your eyes—
To each her emblem whisper sure
Love was awake an hour before.
Ah yes! an hour before ye woke
Low to my heart my emblem spoke,
And grave, as to renew an oath,
It I have kissed and blessed you both.
↑ Mrs. Stevenson. ↑ Lloyd Osbourne. ↑ Mrs. Strong's daughter, Mrs. Stevenson's granddaughter. ↑ Mrs. Strong's son, Austin, Mrs. Stevenson's grandson. ↑ Stevenson's mother. ↑ Stevenson had three topaz rings made, topaz being the stone of his birth month, November. ”

“ We aye the ither bottle drew
⁠To inclination.
Sae let us in the comin' days
Stand sicker on our auncient ways—
The strauchtest road in a' the maze
⁠Since Eve ate apples;
An' let the winter weet our cla'es—
⁠We'll weet oor thrapples. ”

“ Or Gerda following Little Ray,
To wondrous countries far away.
Well, and just so this volume can
Transport each little maid or man
Presto from where they live away
Where other children used to play. ”