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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10910 ***
+
+ROBERT
+
+LOUIS
+
+STEVENSON
+
+
+AN ELEGY
+
+
+AND OTHER POEMS MAINLY PERSONAL
+
+BY
+RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
+
+
+MDCCCXCV
+
+
+TO
+MY DEAR MOTHER AND FATHER
+THESE POEMS ARE LOVINGLY
+DEDICATED
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON: AN ELEGY
+AN ODE TO SPRING
+TREE-WORSHIP
+A BALLAD OF LONDON
+PARIS DAY BY DAY: A FAMILIAR EPISTLE
+ALFRED TENNYSON
+PROFESSOR MINTO
+ON MR. GLADSTONE'S RETIREMENT
+OMAR KHAYYAM
+THE SECOND CRUCIFIXION
+AN IMPRESSION
+NATURAL RELIGION
+FAITH REBORN
+HESPERIDES
+JENNY DEAD
+MY BOOKS
+MAMMON
+ART
+TO A POET
+A NEW YEAR LETTER
+SNATCH
+MY MAIDEN VOTE
+THE ANIMALCULE ON MAN
+COME, MY CELIA
+TIME'S MONOTONE
+
+
+    COR CORDIUM
+
+O GOLDEN DAY! O SILVER NIGHT!
+LOVE'S EXCHANGE
+TO A SIMPLE HOUSEWIFE
+LOVE'S WISDOM
+HOME
+LOVE'S LANDMARKS
+IF, AFTER ALL...!
+SPIRIT OF SADNESS
+AN INSCRIPTION
+SONG
+
+
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+AN ELEGY
+
+High on his Patmos of the Southern Seas
+Our northern dreamer sleeps,
+Strange stars above him, and above his grave
+Strange leaves and wings their tropic splendours wave,
+While, far beneath, mile after shimmering mile,
+The great Pacific, with its faery deeps,
+Smiles all day long its silken secret smile.
+
+Son of a race nomadic, finding still
+Its home in regions furthest from its home,
+Ranging untired the borders of the world,
+And resting but to roam;
+Loved of his land, and making all his boast
+The birthright of the blood from which he came,
+Heir to those lights that guard the Scottish coast,
+And caring only for a filial fame;
+Proud, if a poet, he was Scotsman most,
+And bore a Scottish name.
+
+Death, that long sought our poet, finds at last,
+Death, that pursued him over land and sea:
+Not his the flight of fear, the heart aghast
+With stony dread of immortality,
+He fled 'not cowardly';
+Fled, as some captain, in whose shaping hand
+Lie the momentous fortunes of his land,
+Sheds not vainglorious blood upon the field,
+Death! why at last he finds his treasure isle,
+And he the pirate of its hidden hoard;
+Life! 'twas the ship he sailed to seek it in,
+And Death is but the pilot come aboard,
+Methinks I see him smile a boy's glad smile
+On maddened winds and waters, reefs unknown,
+As thunders in the sail the dread typhoon,
+And in the surf the shuddering timbers groan;
+Horror ahead, and Death beside the wheel:
+Then--spreading stillness of the broad lagoon,
+And lap of waters round the resting keel.
+
+Strange Isle of Voices! must we ask in vain,
+In vain beseech and win no answering word,
+Save mocking echoes of our lonely pain
+From lonely hill and bird?
+Island beneath whose unrelenting coast,
+As though it never in the sun had been,
+The whole world's treasure lieth sunk and lost,
+Unsunned, unseen.
+For, either sunk beyond the diver's skill,
+There, fathoms deep, our gold is all arust,
+Or in that island it is hoarded still.
+Yea, some have said, within thy dreadful wall
+There is a folk that know not death at all,
+The loved we lost, the lost we love, are there.
+Will no kind voice make answer to our cry,
+Give to our aching hearts some little trust,
+Show how 'tis good to live, but best to die?
+Some voice that knows
+Whither the dead man goes:
+We hear his music from the other side,
+Maybe a little tapping on the door,
+A something called, a something sighed--
+No more.
+O for some voice to valiantly declare
+The best news true!
+Then, Happy Island of the Happy Dead,
+How gladly would we spread
+Impatient sail for you!
+
+O vanished loveliness of flowers and faces,
+Treasure of hair, and great immortal eyes,
+Are there for these no safe and secret places?
+And is it true that beauty never dies?
+Soldiers and saints, haughty and lovely names,
+Women who set the whole wide world in flames,
+Poets who sang their passion to the skies,
+And lovers wild and wise:
+Fought they and prayed for some poor flitting gleam,
+Was all they loved and worshipped but a dream?
+Is Love a lie and fame indeed a breath,
+And is there no sure thing in life--but death?
+Or may it be, within that guarded shore,
+He meets Her now whom I shall meet no more
+Till kind Death fold me 'neath his shadowy wing:
+She whom within my heart I softly tell
+That he is dead whom once we loved so well,
+He, the immortal master whom I sing.
+
+Immortal! yea, dare we the word again,
+If aught remaineth of our mortal day,
+That which is written--shall it not remain?
+That which is sung, is it not built for aye?
+Faces must fade, for all their golden looks,
+Unless some poet them eternalise,
+Make live those golden looks in golden books;
+Death, soon or late, will quench the brightest eyes--
+'Tis only what is written never dies.
+Yea, memories that guard like sacred gold
+Some sainted face, they also must grow old,
+Pass and forget, and think--or darest thou not!--
+On all the beauty that is quite forgot.
+
+Strange craft of words, strange magic of the pen,
+Whereby the dead still talk with living men;
+Whereby a sentence, in its trivial scope,
+May centre all we love and all we hope;
+And in a couplet, like a rosebud furled,
+Lie all the wistful wonder of the world.
+
+Old are the stars, and yet they still endure,
+Old are the flowers, yet never fail the spring:
+Why is the song that is so old so new,
+Known and yet strange each sweet small shape and hue?
+How may a poet thus for ever sing,
+Thus build his climbing music sweet and sure,
+As builds in stars and flowers the Eternal mind?
+Ah, Poet, that is yours to seek and find!
+Yea, yours that magisterial skill whereby
+God put all Heaven in a woman's eye,
+Nature's own mighty and mysterious art
+That knows to pack the whole within the part:
+The shell that hums the music of the sea,
+The little word big with Eternity,
+The cosmic rhythm in microcosmic things--
+One song the lark and one the planet sings,
+One kind heart beating warm in bird and tree--
+To hear it beat, who knew so well as he?
+
+Virgil of prose! far distant is the day
+When at the mention of your heartfelt name
+Shall shake the head, and men, oblivious, say:
+'We know him not, this master, nor his fame.'
+Not for so swift forgetfulness you wrought,
+Day upon day, with rapt fastidious pen,
+Turning, like precious stones, with anxious thought,
+This word and that again and yet again,
+Seeking to match its meaning with the world;
+Nor to the morning stars gave ears attent,
+That you, indeed, might ever dare to be
+With other praise than immortality
+Unworthily content.
+
+Not while a boy still whistles on the earth,
+Not while a single human heart beats true,
+Not while Love lasts, and Honour, and the Brave,
+Has earth a grave,
+O well-beloved, for you!
+
+
+
+
+AN ODE TO SPRING
+
+(TO GRANT AND NELLIE ALLEN)
+
+Is it the Spring?
+  Or are the birds all wrong
+That play on flute and viol,
+  A thousand strong,
+In minstrel galleries
+  Of the long deep wood,
+Epiphanies
+  Of bloom and bud.
+
+Grave minstrels those,
+  Of deep responsive chant;
+But see how yonder goes,
+  Dew-drunk, with giddy slant,
+Yon Shelley-lark,
+  And hark!
+Him on the giddy brink
+  Of pearly heaven
+His fairy anvil clink.
+
+Or watch, in fancy,
+  How the brimming note
+Falls, like a string of pearls,
+  From out his heavenly throat;
+Or like a fountain
+  In Hesperides,
+Raining its silver rain,
+  In gleam and chime,
+On backs of ivory girls--
+  Twice happy rhyme!
+
+Ah, none of these
+  May make it plain,
+No image we may seek
+ Shall match the magic of his gurgling beak.
+
+And many a silly thing
+  That hops and cheeps,
+And perks his tiny tail,
+  And sideway peeps,
+And flitters little wing,
+  Seems in his consequential way
+To tell of Spring.
+
+The river warbles soft and runs
+  With fuller curve and sleeker line,
+Though on the winter-blackened hedge
+  Twigs of unbudding iron shine,
+And trampled still the river sedge.
+
+And O the Sun!
+  I have no friend so generous as this Sun
+That comes to meet me with his big warm hands.
+  And O the Sky!
+There is no maid, how true,
+  Is half so chaste
+As the pure kiss of greening willow wands
+  Against the intense pale blue
+Of this sweet boundless overarching waste.
+
+And see!--dear Heaven, but it is the Spring!--
+  See yonder, yonder, by the river there,
+Long glittering pearly fingers flash
+  Upon the warm bright air:
+Why, 'tis the heavenly palm,
+  The Christian tree,
+Whose budding is a psalm
+  Of natural piety:
+Soft silver notches up the smooth green stem--
+  Ah, Spring must follow them,
+It is the Spring!
+
+O Spirit of Spring,
+  Whose strange instinctive art
+Makes the bird sing,
+  And brings the bud again;
+O in my heart
+  Take up thy heavenly reign,
+And from its deeps
+  Draw out the hidden flower,
+And where it sleeps,
+  Throughout the winter long,
+O sweet mysterious power
+  Awake the slothful song!
+
+_February_ 7, 1893.
+
+
+
+
+TREE-WORSHIP
+
+(TO JOHN LANE)
+
+Vast and mysterious brother, ere was yet of me
+  So much as men may poise upon a needle's end,
+Still shook with laughter all this monstrous might of thee,
+  And still with haughty crest it called the morning friend.
+
+Thy latticed column jetted up the bright blue air,
+  Tall as a mast it was, and stronger than a tower;
+Three hundred winters had beheld thee mighty there,
+  Before my little life had lived one little hour.
+
+With rocky foot stern-set like iron in the land,
+  With leafy rustling crest the morning sows with pearls,
+Huge as a minster, half in heaven men saw thee stand,
+  Thy rugged girth the waists of fifty Eastern girls.
+
+Knotted and warted, slabbed and armoured like the hide
+  Of tropic elephant; unstormable and steep
+As some grim fortress with a princess-pearl inside,
+  Where savage guardian faces beard the bastioned keep:
+
+So hard a rind, old tree, shielding so soft a heart--
+  A woman's heart of tender little nestling leaves;
+Nor rind so hard but that a touch so soft can part,
+  And Spring's first baby-bud an easy passage cleaves.
+
+I picture thee within with dainty satin sides,
+  Where all the long day through the sleeping dryad dreams,
+But when the moon bends low and taps thee thrice she glides,
+  Knowing the fairy knock, to bask within her beams.
+
+And all the long night through, for him with eyes and ears,
+  She sways within thine arms and sings a fairy tune,
+Till, startled with the dawn, she softly disappears,
+  And sleeps and dreams again until the rising moon.
+
+But with the peep of day great bands of heavenly birds
+  Fill all thy branchy chambers with a thousand flutes,
+And with the torrid noon stroll up the weary herds,
+  To seek thy friendly shade and doze about thy roots--
+
+Till with the setting sun they turn them once more home;
+  And, ere the moon dawns, for a brief enchanted space,
+Weary with million miles, the sore-spent star-beams come,
+  And moths and bats hold witches' sabbath in the place.
+
+And then I picture thee some bloodstained Holyrood,
+  Dread haunted palace of the bat and owl, whence steal,
+Shrouded all day, lost murdered spirits of the wood,
+  And fright young happy nests with homeless hoot and squeal.
+
+Then, maybe, dangling from thy gloomy gallows boughs,
+  A human corpse swings, mournful, rattling bones and chains--
+His eighteenth century flesh hath fattened nineteenth century cows--
+  Ghastly Aeolian harp fingered of winds and rains.
+
+Poor Rizpah comes to reap each newly-fallen bone
+  That once thrilled soft, a little limb, within her womb;
+And mark yon alchemist, with zodiac-spangled zone,
+  Wrenching the mandrake root that fattens in the gloom.
+
+So rounds thy day, from maiden morn to haunted night,
+  From larks and sunlit dreams to owl and gibbering ghost;
+A catacomb of dark, a maze of living light,
+  To the wide sea of air a green and welcome coast.
+
+I seek a god, old tree: accept my worship, thou!
+  All other gods have failed me always in my need;
+I hang my votive song beneath thy temple bough,
+  Unto thy strength I cry--Old monster, be my creed!
+
+Give me to clasp this earth with feeding roots like thine,
+  To mount yon heaven with such star-aspiring head,
+Fill full with sap and buds this shrunken life of mine,
+  And from my boughs oh! might such stalwart sons be shed.
+
+With loving cheek pressed close against thy horny breast,
+  I hear the roar of sap mounting within thy veins;
+Tingling with buds, thy great hands open towards the west,
+  To catch the sweetheart winds that bring the sister rains.
+
+O winds that blow from out the fruitful mouth of God,
+  O rains that softly fall from His all-loving eyes,
+You that bring buds to trees and daisies to the sod--
+  O God's best Angel of the Spring, in me arise.
+
+
+
+
+A BALLAD OF LONDON
+
+(TO H. W. MASSINSHAM)
+
+Ah, London! London! our delight,
+Great flower that opens but at night,
+Great City of the Midnight Sun,
+Whose day begins when day is done.
+
+Lamp after lamp against the sky
+Opens a sudden beaming eye,
+Leaping alight on either hand,
+The iron lilies of the Strand.
+
+Like dragonflies, the hansoms hover,
+With jewelled eyes, to catch the lover;
+The streets are full of lights and loves,
+Soft gowns, and flutter of soiled doves.
+
+The human moths about the light
+Dash and cling close in dazed delight,
+And burn and laugh, the world and wife,
+For this is London, this is life!
+
+Upon thy petals butterflies,
+But at thy root, some say, there lies
+A world of weeping trodden things,
+Poor worms that have not eyes or wings.
+
+From out corruption of their woe
+Springs this bright flower that charms us so,
+Men die and rot deep out of sight
+To keep this jungle-flower bright.
+
+Paris and London, World-Flowers twain
+Wherewith the World-Tree blooms again,
+Since Time hath gathered Babylon,
+And withered Rome still withers on.
+
+Sidon and Tyre were such as ye,
+How bright they shone upon the Tree!
+But Time hath gathered, both are gone,
+And no man sails to Babylon.
+
+Ah, London! London! our delight,
+For thee, too, the eternal night,
+And Circe Paris hath no charm
+To stay Time's unrelenting arm.
+
+Time and his moths shall eat up all.
+Your chiming towers proud and tall
+He shall most utterly abase,
+And set a desert in their place.
+
+
+
+
+PARIS DAY BY DAY: A FAMILIAR EPISTLE
+
+(TO MRS. HENRY HARLAND[1])
+
+Paris, half Angel, half Grisette,
+I would that I were with thee yet,
+Where the long boulevard at even
+Stretches its starry lamps to heaven,
+And whispers from a thousand trees
+Vague hints of the Hesperides.
+
+Once more, once more, my heart, to sit
+With Aline's smile and Harry's wit,
+To sit and sip the cloudy green,
+With dreamy hints of speech between;
+
+Or, may be, flashing all intent
+At call of some stern argument,
+When the New Woman fain would be,
+Like the Old Male, her husband, free.
+The prose-man takes his mighty lyre
+And talks like music set on fire!
+
+The while the merry crowd slips by
+Glittering and glancing to the eye,
+All happy lovers on their way
+To make a golden end of day--
+Ah! Café truly called _La Paix_!
+
+Or at the _pension_ I would be
+With Transatlantic maidens three,
+The same, I vow, who once of old
+Guarded with song the trees of gold.
+
+O Lady, lady, _Vis-à-Vis_,
+When shall I cease to think of thee,
+On whose fair head the Golden Fleece
+Too soon, too soon, returns to Greece--
+Oh, why to Athens e'er depart?
+Come back, come back, and bring my heart!
+
+And she whose gentle silver grace,
+So wise of speech and kind of face,
+Whose every wise and witty word
+Fell shy, half blushing to be heard.
+
+Last, but ah! surely not least dear,
+That blithe and buxom buccaneer,
+Th' avenging goddess of her sex,
+Born the base soul of man to vex,
+And wring from him those tears and sighs
+Tortured from woman's heart and eyes.
+Ah! fury, fascinating, fair--
+When shall I cease to think of _her_!
+
+Paris, half Angel, half Grisette,
+I would that I were with thee yet,
+But London waits me, like a wife,--
+London, the love of my whole life.
+
+Tell her not, Paris, mercy me!
+How I have flirted, dear, with thee.
+
+[1] By kind permission of the Editor of _The Yellow Book_.
+
+
+
+
+ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+(WESTMINSTER, OCTOBER 12, 1892)
+
+Great man of song, whose glorious laurelled head
+  Within the lap of death sleeps well at last,
+Down the dark road, seeking the deathless dead,
+  Thy faithful, fearless, shining soul hath passed.
+
+Fame blows his silver trumpet o'er thy sleep,
+  And Love stands broken by thy lonely lyre;
+So pure the fire God gave this clay to keep,
+  The clay must still seem holy for the fire.
+
+Poor dupes of sense, we deem the close-shut eye,
+  So faithful servant of his golden tongue,
+Still holds the hoarded lights of earth and sky,
+  We deem the mouth still full of sleeping song.
+
+We mourn as though the great good song he gave
+  Passed with the singer's own informing breath:
+Ah, golden book, for thee there is no grave,
+  Thine is a rhyme that shall not taste of death.
+
+Great wife of his great heart--'tis yours to mourn,
+  Son well-beloved, 'tis yours, who loved him so:
+But we!--hath death one perfect page out-torn
+  From the great song whereby alone we know
+
+The splendid spirit imperiously shy,--
+  Husband to you and father--we afar
+Hail poet of God, and name as one should cry:
+  'Yonder a king, and yonder lo! a star!'
+
+So great his song we deem a little while
+  That Song itself with his great voice hath fled,
+So grand the toga-sweep of his great style,
+  So vast the theme on which his song was fed.
+
+One sings a flower, and one a face, and one
+  Screens from the world a corner choice and small,
+Each toy its little laureate hath, but none
+  Sings of the whole: yea, only he sang all.
+
+Poor little bards, so shameless in your care
+  To snatch the mighty laurel from his head,
+Have you no fear, dwarfs in the giant's chair,
+  How men shall laugh, remembering the dead?
+
+Great is advertisement! 'tis almost fate,
+  But, little mushroom-men, of puff-ball fame,
+Ah, do you dream to be mistaken great
+  And to be really great are just the same?
+
+Ah, fools! he was a laureate ere one leaf
+  Of the great crown had whispered on his brows;
+Fame shrilled his song, Love carolled it, and Grief
+  Blessed it with tears within her lonely house.
+
+Fame loved him well, because he loved not Fame,
+  But Peace and Love, all other things before,
+A man was he ere yet he was a name,
+  His song was much because his love was more.
+
+
+
+
+PROFESSOR MINTO
+
+Nature, that makes Professors all day long,
+And, filling idle souls with idle song,
+Turns out small Poets every other minute,
+Made earth for men--but seldom puts men in it.
+
+Ah, Minto, thou of that minority
+Wert man of men--we had deep need of thee!
+Had Heaven a deeper? Did the heavenly Chair
+Of Earthly Love wait empty for thee there?
+
+_March_ 1, 1893.
+
+
+
+
+ON MR. GLADSTONE'S RETIREMENT
+
+The world grows Lilliput, the great men go;
+  If greatness be, it wears no outer sign;
+  No more the signet of the mighty line
+Stamps the great brow for all the world to know.
+Shrunken the mould of manhood is, and lo!
+  Fragments and fractions of the old divine,
+  Men pert of brain, planned on a mean design,
+Dapper and undistinguished--such we grow.
+
+No more the leonine heroic head,
+  The ruling arm, great heart, and kingly eye;
+No more th' alchemic tongue that turned poor themes
+    Of statecraft into golden-glowing dreams;
+  No more a man for man to deify:
+Laurel no more--the heroic age is dead.
+
+
+
+
+OMAR KHAYYÁM
+
+(TO THE OMAR KHAYYÁM CLUB)
+
+Great Omar, here to-night we drain a bowl
+Unto thy long-since transmigrated soul,
+  Ours all unworthy in thy place to sit,
+Ours still to read in life's enchanted scroll.
+
+For us like thee a little hour to stay,
+For us like thee a little hour of play,
+  A little hour for wine and love and song,
+And we too turn the glass and take our way.
+
+So many years your tomb the roses strew,
+Yet not one penny wiser we than you,
+The doubts that wearied you are with us still,
+And, Heaven be thanked! your wine is with us too.
+
+For, have the years a better message brought
+To match the simple wisdom that you taught:
+  Love, wine and verse, and just a little bread--
+For these to live and count the rest as nought?
+
+Therefore, Great Omar, here our homage deep
+We drain to thee, though all too fast asleep
+  In Death's intoxication art thou sunk
+To know the solemn revels that we keep.
+
+Oh, had we, best-loved Poet, but the power
+From our own lives to pluck one golden hour,
+And give it unto thee in thy great need,
+How would we welcome thee to this bright bower!
+
+O life that is so warm, 'twas Omar's too;
+O wine that is so red, he drank of you:
+  Yet life and wine must all be put away,
+And we go sleep with Omar--yea, 'tis true.
+
+And when in some great city yet to be
+The sacred wine is spilt for you and me,
+  To those great fames that we have yet to build,
+We'll know as little of it all as he.
+
+
+
+
+THE SECOND CRUCIFIXION
+
+Loud mockers in the roaring street
+  Say Christ is crucified again:
+Twice pierced His gospel-bringing feet,
+  Twice broken His great heart in vain.
+
+I hear, and to myself I smile,
+For Christ talks with me all the while.
+
+No angel now to roll the stone
+  From off His unawaking sleep,
+In vain shall Mary watch alone,
+  In vain the soldiers vigil keep.
+
+Yet while they deem my Lord is dead
+My eyes are on His shining head.
+
+Ah! never more shall Mary hear
+  That voice exceeding sweet and low
+Within the garden calling clear:
+  Her Lord is gone, and she must go.
+
+Yet all the while my Lord I meet
+In every London lane and street.
+
+Poor Lazarus shall wait in vain,
+  And Bartimaeus still go blind;
+The healing hem shall ne'er again
+  Be touched by suffering humankind.
+
+Yet all the while I see them rest,
+The poor and outcast, in His breast.
+
+No more unto the stubborn heart
+  With gentle knocking shall He plead,
+No more the mystic pity start,
+  For Christ twice dead is dead indeed.
+
+So in the street I hear men say,
+Yet Christ is with me all the day.
+
+
+
+
+AN IMPRESSION
+
+The floating call of the cuckoo,
+Soft little globes of bosom-shaped sound,
+Came and went at the window;
+And, out in the great green world,
+Those maidens each morn the flowers
+Opened their white little bodices wide to the sun:
+And the man sighed--sighed--in his sleep,
+And the woman smiled.
+
+Then a lark staggered singing by
+Up his shining ladder of dew,
+And the airs of dawn walked softly about the room,
+Filling the morning sky with the scent of the woman's hair,
+And giving, in sweet exchange, its hawthorn and daisy breath:
+And the man awoke with a sob--
+But the woman dreamed.
+
+
+
+
+NATURAL RELIGION
+
+Up through the mystic deeps of sunny air
+I cried to God--'O Father, art Thou there?'
+Sudden the answer, like a flute, I heard:
+It was an angel, though it seemed a bird.
+
+
+
+
+FAITH REBORN
+
+'The old gods pass,' the cry goes round;
+'Lo! how their temples strew the ground';
+Nor mark we where, on new-fledged wings,
+Faith, like the phoenix, soars and sings.
+
+
+
+
+HESPERIDES
+
+Men say--beyond the western seas
+  The happy isles no longer glow,
+No sailor sights Hesperides,
+  All that was long ago.
+
+No longer in a glittering morn
+  Their misty meadows flicker nigh,
+No singing with the spray is borne,
+  All that is long gone by.
+
+To-day upon the golden beach
+  No gold-haired guardian maidens stand,
+No apples ripen out of reach,
+  And none are mad to land.
+
+The merchant-men, 'tis they say so,
+  That trade across the western seas,
+In hurried transit to and fro,
+  About Hesperides.
+
+But, Reader, not as these thou art,
+  So, loose thy shallop from its hold,
+And, trusting to the ancient chart,
+  Thou 'It make them as of old.
+
+
+
+
+JENNY DEAD
+
+Like a flower in the frost
+  Sweet Jenny lies,
+With her frail hands calmly crossed,
+  And close-shut eyes.
+
+Bring a candle, for the room
+  Is dark and cold,
+Antechamber of the tomb--
+  O grief untold!
+
+Like a snowdrift is her bed,
+  Dinted the snow,
+Faint frozen lines from foot to head,--
+  She lies below.
+
+Turn from off her shrouded face
+  The frigid sheet....
+Death hath doubled all her grace--
+  O Jenny, sweet!
+
+
+
+
+MY BOOKS
+
+What are my books?--My friends, my loves,
+  My church, my tavern, and my only wealth;
+My garden: yea, my flowers, my bees, my doves;
+  My only doctors--and my only health.
+
+
+
+
+MAMMON
+
+(FOR MR, G. F. WATTS'S PICTURE)
+
+Mammon is this, of murder and of gold,
+To-day, to-morrow, and ever from of old,
+Th' Almighty God, and King of every land.
+Man 'neath his foot, and woman 'neath his hand,
+Kneel prostrate: he, 'tis meant to symbolise,
+Steals our strong men and our sweet women buys.
+
+O! rather grind me down into the dust
+Than choose me for the vessel of thy lust.
+
+
+
+
+ART
+
+Art is a gipsy,
+  Fickle as fair,
+Good to kiss and flirt with,
+  But marry--if you dare!
+
+
+
+
+TO A POET
+
+(TO EDMUND GOSSE)
+
+Still towards the steep Parnassian way
+The moon-led pilgrims wend,
+Ah, who of all that start to-day
+Shall ever reach the end?
+
+Year after year a dream-fed band
+That scorn the vales below,
+And scorn the fatness of the land
+To win those heights of snow,--
+
+Leave barns and kine and flocks behind,
+And count their fortune fair,
+If they a dozen leaves may bind
+Of laurel in their hair.
+
+Like us, dear Poet, once you trod
+That sweet moon-smitten way,
+With mouth of silver sought the god
+All night and all the day;
+
+Sought singing, till in rosy fire
+The white Apollo came,
+And touched your brow, and wreathed your lyre,
+And named you by his name;
+
+And led you, loving, by the hand
+To those grave laurelled bowers,
+Where keep your high immortal band
+Your high immortal hours.
+
+Strait was the way, thorn-set and long--
+Ah, tell us, shining there,
+Is fame as wonderful as song?
+And laurels in your hair!
+
+
+
+
+A NEW YEAR LETTER
+
+_To Two Friends married in the New Year_
+
+(TO. MR. AND MRS. WELCH)
+
+Another year to its last day,
+Like a lost sovereign, runaway,
+Tips down the gloomy grid of time:
+In vain to holloa, 'Stop it! hey!'--
+A cab-horse that has taken fright,
+Be you a policeman, stop you may;
+But not a sovereign mad with glee
+That scampers to the grid, perdie,
+And not a year that's taken flight;
+To both 'tis just a grim good night.
+
+But no! the imagery, say you,
+Is wondrous witty--but not true;
+For the old year that last night went
+Has not been so much lost as spent:
+You gave it in exchange to Death
+For just twelve months of happy breath.
+
+It was a ticket to admit
+Two happy people close to sit--
+A 'Season' ticket, one might say,
+At Time's eternal passion play.
+
+O magic overture of Spring,
+O Summer like an Eastern King,
+O Autumn, splendid widowed Queen,
+O Winter, alabaster tomb
+Where lie the regal twain serene,
+Gone to their yearly doom.
+
+But all you bought with that spent year,--
+Ah, friends! it was as nothing, was it?
+Nothing at all to hold compare
+With what you buy with this New Year.
+A home! ah me, you could not buy
+Another half so precious toy,
+With all the other years to come
+As that grown-up doll's house--a home.
+
+O wine upon its threshold stone,
+And horse-shoes on the lintel of it,
+And happy hearts to keep it warm,
+And God Himself to love it!
+Dear little nest built snug on bough
+Within the World-Tree's mighty arms,
+I would I knew a spell that charms
+Eternal safety from the storm;
+
+To give you always stars above,
+And always roses on the bough--
+But then the Tree's own root is Love,
+Love, love, all love, I vow.
+
+_New Year_ 1893.
+
+
+
+
+SNATCH
+
+From tavern to tavern
+  Youth passes along,
+With an armful of girl
+  And a heart full of song.
+
+From flower to flower
+  The butterfly sips,
+O passionate limbs
+  And importunate lips!
+
+From candle to candle
+  The moth loves to fly,
+O sweet, sweet to burn!
+  And still sweeter to die!
+
+
+
+
+MY MAIDEN VOTE
+
+(TO JOHN FRASER)
+
+There, in my mind's-eye, pure it lay,
+My lodger's vote! 'Twas mine to-day.
+It seemed a sort of maidenhood,
+My little power for public good,--
+Oh keep it uncorrupted, pray!
+And, when it must be given away,
+See it be given with a sense
+Of most uncanvassed innocence.
+Alas!--but few there be that know't--
+How grave a thing it is to vote!
+For most men's votes are given, I hear,
+Either for rhetoric or--beer.
+
+A young man's vote--O fair estate!
+Of the great tree electorate
+A living leaf, of this great sea
+A motive wave of empire I,
+On this stupendous wheel--a fly.
+O maiden vote, how pure must be
+The party that is worthy thee!
+And thereupon my mind began
+That perfect government to plan,
+The high millennium of man.
+
+Then in my dream I saw arise
+An England, ah! so fair and wise,
+An England generously great,
+No selfish island, but a state
+Upon the world's bright forehead worn,
+A mighty star of mighty morn.
+
+And statesmen in that dream became
+No tricksters of the petty aim,
+Mere speculators in the rise
+Of programmes and of party cries,
+Expert in all those turns and tricks
+That make this senate-house of ours,
+Westminster, with its lordly towers,
+The stock-exchange of politics.
+But that ideal Parliament
+Did all it said, said all it meant,
+And every Minister of State
+Was guileless--as a candidate.
+
+Statesmen no more the tinker's way
+Mended and patched from day to day,
+Content with piecing part with part,
+But took the mighty problem whole,
+Beginning with the human heart:
+For noble rulers make in vain
+Unselfish laws for selfish men,
+And give the whole wide world its vote,
+But who is going to give it soul?
+
+And then I dreamed had come to reign
+True peace within our land again;
+Not peace that rots the soul with ease,
+Or those ignoble 'rivalries
+Of peace' more murderous than war,
+But just the simple peasant peace
+The weary world is waiting for.
+With simple food and simple wear
+Go lots of love and little care,
+And joy is saved from over-sweet
+By struggle not too hard to bear.
+
+So dreamed I on from dream to dream,
+Till, slow returning to my theme,
+Upon my vote I looked again--
+To whom was I to give it then?
+That uncorrupted maidenhood,
+My little power for public good.
+What party was there that I knew
+That I might dare intrust it to,
+A perfect party fair and square--
+My House of Commons in the air?
+
+Though called by many different names,
+Each one professed the noblest aims;
+Should all be right, 'twas logical
+That I should give my vote to all!
+
+And then, of parties old and new
+Which one, if only one, were true?
+
+The divination passed my skill,--
+My maiden vote is maiden still.
+
+
+
+
+THE ANIMALCULE ON MAN
+
+An animalcule in my blood
+  Rose up against me as I dreamed,
+He was so tiny as he stood,
+  You had not heard him, though he screamed.
+
+He cried 'There is no Man!'
+  And thumped the table with his fist,
+Then died--his day was scarce a span,--
+  That microscopic atheist.
+
+Yet all the while his little soul
+  Within what he denied did live,--
+Poor part, how could he know the whole?
+  And yet he was so positive!
+
+And all the while he thus blasphemed
+  My (solar) system went its round,
+My heart beat on, my head still dreamed,--
+  But my poor atheist was drowned.
+
+
+
+
+COME, MY CELIA
+
+Come, my Celia, let us prove,
+While we may, how wise is love--
+Love grown old and grey with years,
+Love whose blood is thinned with tears.
+
+Philosophic lover I,
+Broke my heart, its love run dry,
+And I warble passion's words
+But to hear them sing like birds.
+
+When the lightning struck my side,
+Love shrieked and for ever died,
+Leaving nought of him behind
+But these playthings of the mind.
+
+Now the real play is over
+I can only _act_ a lover,
+Now the mimic play begins
+With its puppet joys and sins.
+
+When the heart no longer feels,
+And the blood with caution steals,
+Then, ah! then--my heart, forgive!--
+Then we dare begin to live.
+
+Dipped in Stygian waves of pain,
+We can never feel again;
+Time may hurl his deadliest darts,
+Love may practise all his arts;
+
+Like some Balder, lo! we stand
+Safe 'mid hurtling spear and brand,
+Only Death--ah! sweet Death, throw!--
+Holds the fatal mistletoe.
+
+Let the young unconquered soul
+Love the unit as the whole,
+Let the young uncheated eye
+Love the face fore-doomed to die:
+
+But, my Celia, not for us
+Pleasures half so hazardous;
+Let us set our hearts on play,
+'Tis, alas! the only way--
+
+Make of life the jest it is,
+Laugh and fool and (maybe!) kiss,
+Never for a moment, dear,
+Love so well to risk a fear.
+
+Is not this, my Celia, say,
+The only wise--and weary--way?
+
+
+
+
+TIME'S MONOTONE
+
+    Autumn and Winter,
+    Summer and Spring--
+Hath Time no other song to sing?
+Weary we grow of the changeless tune--
+    June--December,
+    December--June!
+
+Time, like a bird, hath but one song,
+  One way to build, like a bird hath he;
+Thus hath he built so long, so long,
+  Thus hath he sung--Ah me!
+
+Time, like a spider, knows, be sure,
+  One only wile, though he seems so wise:
+Death is his web, and Love his lure,
+  And you and I his flies.
+
+
+      'Love!' he sings
+    In the morning clear,
+      'Love! Love! Love!'
+    And you never hear
+    How, under his breath,
+    He whispers, 'Death!
+    Death! Death!'
+
+Yet Time--'tis the strangest thing of all--
+  Knoweth not the sense of the words he saith;
+Eternity taught him his parrot-call
+  Of 'Love and Death.'
+
+Year after year doth the old man climb
+  The mountainous knees of Eternity,
+But Eternity telleth nothing to Time--
+  It may not be.
+
+
+
+
+COR CORDIUM
+
+
+O GOLDEN DAY! O SILVER NIGHT!
+
+O golden day! O silver night!
+  That brought my own true love at last,
+Ah, wilt thou drop from out our sight,
+  And drown within the past?
+
+One wave, no more, in life's wide sea,
+  One little nameless crest of foam,
+The day that gave her all to me
+  And brought us to our home.
+
+Nay, rather as the morning grows
+  In flush, and gleam, and kingly ray,
+While up the heaven the sun-god goes,
+  So shall ascend our day.
+
+And when at last the long night nears,
+  And love grows angel in the gloam,
+Nay, sweetheart, what of fears and tears?--
+  The stars shall see us home.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE'S EXCHANGE
+
+Simple am I, I care no whit
+  For pelf or place,
+It is enough for me to sit
+  And watch Dulcinea's face;
+To mark the lights and shadows flit
+  Across the silver moon of it.
+
+I have no other merchandise,
+  No stocks or shares,
+No other gold but just what lies
+ In those deep eyes of hers;
+And, sure, if all the world were wise,
+It too would bank within her eyes.
+
+I buy up all her smiles all day
+  With all my love,
+And sell them back, cost-price, or, say,
+  A kiss or two above;
+It is a speculation fine,
+The profit must be always mine.
+
+The world has many things, 'tis true,
+  To fill its time,
+Far more important things to do
+  Than making love and rhyme;
+Yet, if it asked me to advise,
+I'd say--buy up Dulcinea's eyes!
+
+
+
+
+TO A SIMPLE HOUSEWIFE
+
+Who dough shall knead as for God's sake
+  Shall fill it with celestial leaven,
+And every loaf that she shall bake
+  Be eaten of the Blest in heaven.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE'S WISDOM
+
+Sometimes my idle heart would roam
+  Far from its quiet happy nest,
+To seek some other newer home,
+  Some unaccustomed Best:
+But ere it spreads its foolish wings,
+'Heart, stay at home, be wise!' Love's wisdom sings.
+
+Sometimes my idle heart would sail
+  From out its quiet sheltered bay,
+To tempt a less pacific gale,
+  And oceans far away:
+But ere it shakes its foolish wings,
+'Heart, stay at home, be wise!' Love's wisdom sings.
+
+Sometimes my idle heart would fly,
+  Mothlike, to reach some shining sin,
+It seems so sweet to burn and die
+  That wondrous light within:
+But ere it burns its foolish wings,
+'Heart, stay at home, be wise!' Love's wisdom sings.
+
+
+
+
+HOME ...
+
+'We're going home!' I heard two lovers say,
+  They kissed their friends and bade them bright good-byes;
+  I hid the deadly hunger in my eyes,
+And, lest I might have killed them, turned away.
+Ah, love! we too once gambolled home as they,
+  Home from the town with such fair merchandise,--
+  Wine and great grapes--the happy lover buys:
+A little cosy feast to crown the day.
+
+Yes! we had once a heaven we called a home
+  Its empty rooms still haunt me like thine eyes,
+When the last sunset softly faded there;
+Each day I tread each empty haunted room,
+    And now and then a little baby cries,
+  Or laughs a lovely laughter worse to bear.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE'S LANDMARKS
+
+The woods we used to walk, my love,
+  Are woods no more,
+But' villas' now with sounding names--
+  All name and door.
+
+The pond, where, early on in March,
+  The yellow cup
+Of water-lilies made us glad,
+  Is now filled up.
+
+But ah! what if they fill or fell
+  Each pond, each tree,
+What matters it to-day, my love,
+  To me--to thee?
+
+The jerry-builder may consume,
+  A greedy moth,
+God's mantle of the living green,
+  I feel no wrath;
+
+Eat up the beauty of the world,
+  And gorge his fill
+On mead and winding country lane,
+  And grassy hill.
+
+I only laugh, for now of these
+  I have no care,
+Now that to me the fair is foul,
+  And foul as fair.
+
+
+
+
+IF, AFTER ALL ...!
+
+This life I squander, hating the long days
+That will not bring me either Rest or Thee,
+This health I hack and ravage as with knives,
+These nerves I fain would shatter, and this heart
+I fain would break--this heart that, traitor-like,
+Beats on with foolish and elastic beat:
+If, after all, this life I waste and kill
+Should still be thine, may still be lived for thee!
+And this the dreadful trial of my love,
+This silence and this blank that makes me mad,
+That I be man to-day of all the days
+My one poor hope of meeting thee again--
+If Death be Love, and God's great purpose kind!
+
+Oh, love, if some day on the heavenly stair
+A wild ecstatic moment we should stand,
+And I, all hungry for your eyes and hair,
+Should meet instead your great accusing gaze,
+And hear, instead of welcome into heaven:
+'Ah! hadst thou but been true! but manfully
+Borne the high pangs that all high souls must bear,
+Nor fled to low nepenthes for your pain!
+Hadst said--"Is she not here? more reason then
+To live as though still guarded by her eyes,
+Cleaner my thought, and purer be my deed;
+True will I be, though God Himself be false!"'
+
+Oh, hadst thou thus been man, to-day had we
+Walked on together undivided now--
+But now a thousand flaming years must pass,
+And all the trial be gone o'er again.
+
+
+
+
+SPIRIT OF SADNESS
+
+She loved the Autumn, I the Spring,
+Sad all the songs she loved to sing;
+And in her face was strangely set
+Some great inherited regret.
+
+Some look in all things made her sigh,
+Yea! sad to her the morning sky:
+'So sad! so sad its beauty seems'--
+I hear her say it still in dreams.
+
+But when the day grew grey and old,
+And rising stars shone strange and cold,
+Then only in her face I saw
+A mystic glee, a joyous awe.
+
+Spirit of Sadness, in the spheres
+Is there an end of mortal tears?
+Or is there still in those great eyes
+That look of lonely hills and skies?
+
+
+
+
+AN INSCRIPTION
+
+Precious the box that Mary brake
+Of spikenard for her Master's sake,
+But ah! it held nought half so dear
+As the sweet dust that whitens here.
+The greater wonder who shall say:
+To make so white a soul of clay,
+From clay to win a face so fair,
+Those strange great eyes, that sunlit hair
+A-ripple o'er her witty brain,--
+Or turn all back to dust again.
+
+Who knows--but, in some happy hour,
+The God whose strange alchemic power
+Wrought her of dust, again may turn
+To woman this immortal urn.
+
+
+
+
+SONG
+
+She's somewhere in the sunlight strong,
+  Her tears are in the falling rain,
+She calls me in the wind's soft song,
+  And with the flowers she comes again.
+
+Yon bird is but her messenger,
+  The moon is but her silver car;
+Yea! sun and moon are sent by her,
+  And every wistful waiting star.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And
+Other Poems, by Richard Le Gallienne
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10910 ***