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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson -
+Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25), by Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+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: The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25)
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+Other: Andrew Lang
+
+Release Date: December 12, 2009 [EBook #30659]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF R.L. STEVENSON V14 OF 25 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marius Masi, Jonathan Ingram and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ THE WORKS OF
+
+ ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+ SWANSTON EDITION
+
+ VOLUME XIV
+
+
+ _Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five
+ Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS
+ STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies
+ have been printed, of which only Two Thousand
+ Copies are for sale._
+
+ _This is No._ ........
+
+[Illustration: ALISON CUNNINGHAM, R. L. S.'S NURSE]
+
+
+
+
+ THE WORKS OF
+
+ ROBERT LOUIS
+
+ STEVENSON
+
+ VOLUME FOURTEEN
+
+
+ LONDON : PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND
+ WINDUS : IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL
+ AND COMPANY LIMITED : WILLIAM
+ HEINEMANN : AND LONGMANS GREEN
+ AND COMPANY MDCCCCXI
+
+
+
+
+ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES
+ PAGE
+ I. BED IN SUMMER 3
+ In winter I get up at night
+
+ II. A THOUGHT 3
+ It is very nice to think
+
+ III. AT THE SEA-SIDE 4
+ When I was down beside the sea
+
+ IV. YOUNG NIGHT THOUGHT 4
+ All night long, and every night
+
+ V. WHOLE DUTY OF CHILDREN 5
+ A child should always say what's true
+
+ VI. RAIN 5
+ The rain is raining all around
+
+ VII. PIRATE STORY 5
+ Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing
+
+ VIII. FOREIGN LANDS 6
+ Up into the cherry-tree
+
+ IX. WINDY NIGHTS 7
+ Whenever the moon and stars are set
+
+ X. TRAVEL 7
+ I should like to rise and go
+
+ XI. SINGING 9
+ Of speckled eggs the birdie sings
+
+ XII. LOOKING FORWARD 9
+ When I am grown to man's estate
+
+ XIII. A GOOD PLAY 9
+ We built a ship upon the stairs
+
+ XIV. WHERE GO THE BOATS? 10
+ Dark brown is the river
+
+ XV. AUNTIE'S SKIRTS 11
+ Whenever Auntie moves around
+
+ XVI. THE LAND OF COUNTERPANE 11
+ When I was sick and lay a-bed
+
+ XVII. THE LAND OF NOD 12
+ From breakfast on all through the day
+
+ XVIII. MY SHADOW 12
+ I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me
+
+ XIX. SYSTEM 13
+ Every night my prayers I say
+
+ XX. A GOOD BOY 14
+ I woke before the morning, I was happy all the day
+
+ XXI. ESCAPE AT BEDTIME 14
+ The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
+
+ XXII. MARCHING SONG 15
+ Bring the comb and play upon it
+
+ XXIII. THE COW 16
+ The friendly cow, all red and white
+
+ XXIV. HAPPY THOUGHT 16
+ The world is so full of a number of things
+
+ XXV. THE WIND 16
+ I saw you toss the kites on high
+
+ XXVI. KEEPSAKE MILL 17
+ Over the borders, a sin without pardon
+
+ XXVII. GOOD AND BAD CHILDREN 18
+ Children, you are very little
+
+ XXVIII. FOREIGN CHILDREN 19
+ Little Indian, Sioux or Crow
+
+ XXIX. THE SUN'S TRAVELS 20
+ The sun is not a-bed when I
+
+ XXX. THE LAMPLIGHTER 20
+ My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky
+
+ XXXI. MY BED IS A BOAT 21
+ My bed is like a little boat
+
+ XXXII. THE MOON 22
+ The moon has a face like the clock in the hall
+
+ XXXIII. THE SWING 22
+ How do you like to go up in a swing
+
+ XXXIV. TIME TO RISE 23
+ A birdie with a yellow bill
+
+ XXXV. LOOKING-GLASS RIVER 23
+ Smooth it slides upon its travel
+
+ XXXVI. FAIRY BREAD 24
+ Come up here, O dusty feet
+
+ XXXVII. FROM A RAILWAY CARRIAGE 24
+ Faster than fairies, faster than witches
+
+ XXXVIII. WINTER-TIME 25
+ Late lies the wintry sun a-bed
+
+ XXXIX. THE HAYLOFT 26
+ Through all the pleasant meadow-side
+
+ XL. FAREWELL TO THE FARM 26
+ The coach is at the door at last
+
+ XLI. North-West Passage 27
+
+ 1. GOOD NIGHT 27
+ When the bright lamp is carried in
+
+ 2. SHADOW MARCH 28
+ All round the house is the jet-black night
+
+ 3. IN PORT 28
+ Last, to the chamber where I lie
+
+
+ THE CHILD ALONE
+
+ I. THE UNSEEN PLAYMATE 31
+ When children are playing alone on the green
+
+ II. MY SHIP AND I 32
+ O it's I that am the captain of a tidy little ship
+
+ III. MY KINGDOM 32
+ Down by a shining water well
+
+ IV. PICTURE-BOOKS IN WINTER 33
+ Summer fading, winter comes
+
+ V. MY TREASURES 34
+ These nuts, that I keep in the back of the nest
+
+ VI. BLOCK CITY 35
+ What are you able to build with your blocks
+
+ VII. THE LAND OF STORY-BOOKS 36
+ At evening when the lamp is lit
+
+ VIII. ARMIES IN THE FIRE 37
+ The lamps now glitter down the street
+
+ IX. THE LITTLE LAND 38
+ When at home alone I sit
+
+
+ GARDEN DAYS
+
+ I. NIGHT AND DAY 43
+ When the golden day is done
+
+ II. NEST EGGS 44
+ Birds all the sunny day
+
+ III. THE FLOWERS 46
+ All the names I know from nurse
+
+ IV. SUMMER SUN 46
+ Great is the sun, and wide he goes
+
+ V. THE DUMB SOLDIER 47
+ When the grass was closely mown
+
+ VI. AUTUMN FIRES 49
+ In the other gardens
+
+ VII. THE GARDENER 49
+ The gardener does not love to talk
+
+ VIII. HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS 50
+ Dear Uncle Jim, this garden ground
+
+
+ ENVOYS
+
+ I. TO WILLIE AND HENRIETTA 55
+ If two may read aright
+
+ II. TO MY MOTHER 55
+ You too, my mother, read my rhymes
+
+ III. TO AUNTIE 56
+ _Chief of our aunts_--not only I
+
+ IV. TO MINNIE 56
+ The red room with the giant bed
+
+ V. TO MY NAME-CHILD 58
+ Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn
+ with proper speed.
+
+ VI. TO ANY READER 59
+ As from the house your mother sees
+
+
+ UNDERWOODS
+
+ BOOK I: IN ENGLISH
+
+ I. ENVOY 67
+ Go, little book, and wish to all
+
+ II. A SONG OF THE ROAD 67
+ The gauger walked with willing foot
+
+ III. THE CANOE SPEAKS 68
+ On the great streams the ships may go
+
+ IV. 70
+ It is the season now to go
+
+ V. THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL 71
+ _A naked house, a naked moor_
+
+ VI. A VISIT FROM THE SEA 72
+ Far from the loud sea beaches
+
+ VII. TO A GARDENER 73
+ Friend, in my mountain-side demesne
+
+ VIII. TO MINNIE 74
+ A picture-frame for you to fill
+
+ IX. TO K. DE M. 74
+ A lover of the moorland bare
+
+ X. TO N. V. DE G. S. 75
+ The unfathomable sea, and time, and tears
+
+ XI. TO WILL. H. LOW 76
+ Youth now flees on feathered foot
+
+ XII. TO MRS. WILL. H. LOW 77
+ Even in the bluest noonday of July
+
+ XIII. TO H. F. BROWN 78
+ I sit and wait a pair of oars
+
+ XIV. TO ANDREW LANG 79
+ Dear Andrew, with the brindled hair
+
+ XV. ET TU IN ARCADIA VIXISTI (TO R. A. M. S.) 80
+ In ancient tales, O friend, thy spirit dwelt
+
+ XVI. TO W. E. HENLEY 82
+ The year runs through her phases; rain and sun
+
+ XVII. HENRY JAMES 83
+ Who comes to-night? We ope the doors in vain
+
+ XVIII. THE MIRROR SPEAKS 84
+ Where the bells peal far at sea
+
+ XIX. KATHARINE 85
+ We see you as we see a face
+
+ XX. TO F. J. S. 85
+ I read, dear friend, in your dear face
+
+ XXI. REQUIEM 86
+ Under the wide and starry sky
+
+ XXII. THE CELESTIAL SURGEON 86
+ If I have faltered more or less
+
+ XXIII. OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 87
+ Out of the sun, out of the blast
+
+ XXIV. 89
+ Not yet, my soul, these friendly fields desert
+
+ XXV. 90
+ It is not yours, O mother, to complain
+
+ XXVI. THE SICK CHILD 92
+ O mother, lay your hand on my brow
+
+ XXVII. IN MEMORIAM F. A. S. 93
+ Yet, O stricken heart, remember, O remember
+
+ XXVIII. TO MY FATHER 93
+ Peace and her huge invasion to these shores
+
+ XXIX. IN THE STATES 94
+ With half a heart I wander here
+
+ XXX. A PORTRAIT 95
+ I am a kind of farthing dip
+
+ XXXI. 96
+ Sing clearlier, Muse, or evermore be still
+
+ XXXII. A CAMP 96
+ The bed was made, the room was fit
+
+ XXXIII. THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 96
+ We travelled in the print of olden wars
+
+ XXXIV. SKERRYVORE 97
+ For love of lovely words, and for the sake
+
+ XXXV. SKERRYVORE: THE PARALLEL 97
+ Here all is sunny, and when the truant gull
+
+ XXXVI. 98
+ _My house_, I say. But hark to the sunny doves
+
+ XXXVII. 98
+ My body which my dungeon is
+
+ XXXVIII. 99
+ Say not of me that weakly I declined
+
+
+ BOOK II: IN SCOTS
+
+ I. THE MAKER TO POSTERITY 105
+ Far 'yont amang the years to be
+
+ II. ILLE TERRARUM 106
+ Frae nirly, nippin', Eas'lan' breeze
+
+ III. 109
+ When aince Aprile has fairly come
+
+ IV. A MILE AN' A BITTOCK 110
+ A mile an' a bittock, a mile or twa
+
+ V. A LOWDEN SABBATH MORN 111
+ The clinkum-clank o' Sabbath bells
+
+ VI. THE SPAEWIFE 116
+ O, I wad like to ken--to the beggar-wife says I
+
+ VII. THE BLAST--1875 116
+ It's rainin'. Weet's the gairden sod
+
+ VIII. THE COUNTERBLAST--1886 118
+ My bonny man, the warld, it's true
+
+ IX. THE COUNTERBLAST IRONICAL 120
+ It's strange that God should fash to frame
+
+ X. THEIR LAUREATE TO AN ACADEMY CLASS DINNER CLUB 121
+ Dear Thamson class, whaure'er I gang
+
+ XI. EMBRO HIE KIRK 123
+ The Lord Himsel' in former days
+
+ XII. THE SCOTSMAN'S RETURN FROM ABROAD 125
+ In mony a foreign pairt I've been
+
+ XIII. 129
+ Late In the night in bed I lay
+
+ XIV. MY CONSCIENCE! 131
+ Of a' the ills that flesh can fear
+
+ XV. TO DR. JOHN BROWN 133
+ By Lyne and Tyne, by Thames and Tees
+
+ XVI. 135
+ It's an owercome sooth for age an' youth
+
+
+ BALLADS
+
+
+ THE SONG OF RAHÉRO
+
+ A LEGEND OF TAHITI
+
+ I. THE SLAYING OF TÁMATÉA 139
+
+ II. THE VENGING OF TÁMATÉA 148
+
+ III. RAHÉRO 159
+
+
+ THE FEAST OF FAMINE
+
+ MARQUESAN MANNERS
+
+ I. THE PRIEST'S VIGIL 169
+
+ II. THE LOVERS 172
+
+ III. THE FEAST 176
+
+ IV. THE RAID 182
+
+
+ TICONDEROGA
+
+ A LEGEND OF THE WEST HIGHLANDS
+
+ I. THE SAYING OF THE NAME 189
+
+ II. THE SEEKING OF THE NAME 194
+
+ III. THE PLACE OF THE NAME 196
+
+
+ HEATHER ALE
+
+ A GALLOWAY LEGEND
+
+ From the bonny bells of heather 201
+
+
+ CHRISTMAS AT SEA
+
+ The sheets were frozen hard 207
+
+
+ NOTES TO THE SONG OF RAHÉRO 211
+
+ NOTES TO THE FEAST OF FAMINE 213
+
+ NOTES TO TICONDEROGA 214
+
+ NOTE TO HEATHER ALE 215
+
+
+ SONGS OF TRAVEL
+
+ I. THE VAGABOND 219
+ Give to me the life I love
+
+ II. YOUTH AND LOVE--I 220
+ Once only by the garden gate
+
+ III. YOUTH AND LOVE--II 221
+ To the heart of youth the world is a highwayside
+
+ IV. 221
+ In dreams, unhappy, I behold you stand
+
+ V. 222
+ She rested by the Broken Brook
+
+ VI. 222
+ The infinite shining heavens
+
+ VII. 223
+ Plain as the glistering planets shine
+
+ VIII. 224
+ To you, let snow and roses
+
+ IX. 224
+ Let Beauty awake in the morn from beautiful dreams
+
+ X. 225
+ I know not how it is with you
+
+ XI. 225
+ I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
+
+ XII. WE HAVE LOVED OF YORE 226
+ Berried brake and reedy island
+
+ XIII. MATER TRIUMPHANS 227
+ Son of my woman's body, you go, to the drum and
+ fife
+
+ XIV. 227
+ Bright is the ring of words
+
+ XV. 228
+ In the highlands, in the country places
+
+ XVI. 229
+ Home no more home to me, whither must I wander
+
+ XVII. WINTER 230
+ In rigorous hours, when down the iron lane
+
+ XVIII. 230
+ The stormy evening closes now in vain
+
+ XIX. TO DR. HAKE 231
+ In the beloved hour that ushers day
+
+ XX. TO ---- 232
+ I knew thee strong and quiet like the hills
+
+ XXI. 233
+ The morning drum-call on my eager ear
+
+ XXII. 233
+ I have trod the upward and the downward slope
+
+ XXIII. 233
+ He hears with gladdened heart the thunder
+
+ XXIV. 233
+ Farewell, fair day and fading light
+
+ XXV. IF THIS WERE FAITH 234
+ God, if this were enough
+
+ XXVI. MY WIFE 235
+ Trusty, dusky, vivid, true
+
+ XXVII. TO THE MUSE 236
+ Resign the rhapsody, the dream
+
+ XXVIII. TO AN ISLAND PRINCESS 237
+ Since long ago, a child at home
+
+ XXIX. TO KALAKAUA 238
+ The Silver Ship, my King--that was her name
+
+ XXX. TO PRINCESS KAIULANI 239
+ Forth from her land to mine she goes
+
+ XXXI. TO MOTHER MARYANNE 240
+ To see the infinite pity of this place
+
+ XXXII. IN MEMORIAM E. H. 240
+ I knew a silver head was bright beyond compare
+
+ XXXIII. TO MY WIFE 241
+ Long must elapse ere you behold again
+
+ XXXIV. TO MY OLD FAMILIARS 242
+ Do you remember--can we e'er forget
+
+ XXXV. 243
+ The tropics vanish, and meseems that I
+
+ XXXVI. TO S. C. 244
+ I heard the pulse of the besieging sea
+
+ XXXVII. THE HOUSE OF TEMBINOKA 245
+ _Let us, who part like brothers, part like bards_
+
+ XXXVIII. THE WOODMAN 249
+ In all the grove, nor stream nor bird
+
+ XXXIX. TROPIC RAIN 254
+ As the single pang of the blow, when the metal is
+ mingled well
+
+ XL. AN END OF TRAVEL 255
+ Let now your soul in this substantial world
+
+ XLI. 255
+ We uncommiserate pass into the night
+
+ XLII. 256
+ Sing me a song of a lad that is gone
+
+ XLIII. TO S. R. CROCKETT 257
+ Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain
+ are flying
+
+ XLIV. EVENSONG 257
+ The embers of the day are red
+
+
+ ADDITIONAL POEMS
+
+ I. A FAMILIAR EPISTLE 261
+ Blame me not that this epistle
+
+ II. RONDELS 263
+ 1. Far have you come, my lady, from the town
+ 2. Nous n'irons plus au bois
+ 3. Since I am sworn to live my life
+ 4. Of his pitiable transformation
+
+ III. EPISTLE TO CHARLES BAXTER 265
+ Noo lyart leaves blaw ower the green
+
+ IV. THE SUSQUEHANNAH AND THE DELAWARE 267
+ Of where or how, I nothing know
+
+ V. EPISTLE TO ALBERT DEW-SMITH 268
+ Figure me to yourself, I pray
+
+ VI. ALCAICS TO HORATIO F. BROWN 270
+ Brave lads in olden musical centuries
+
+ VII. A LYTLE JAPE OF TUSHERIE 272
+ The pleasant river gushes
+
+ VIII. TO VIRGIL AND DORA WILLIAMS 273
+ Here, from the forelands of the tideless sea
+
+ IX. BURLESQUE SONNET 273
+ Thee, Mackintosh, artificer of light
+
+ X. THE FINE PACIFIC ISLANDS 274
+ The jolly English Yellowboy
+
+ XI. AULD REEKIE 275
+ When chitterin' cauld the day sall daw
+
+ XII. THE LESSON OF THE MASTER 276
+ Adela, Adela, Adela Chart
+
+ XIII. THE CONSECRATION OF BRAILLE 276
+ I was a barren tree before
+
+ XIV. SONG 277
+ Light foot and tight foot
+
+
+
+
+A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES
+
+
+ _TO
+ ALISON CUNNINGHAM
+ FROM HER BOY_
+
+
+ _For the long nights you lay awake
+ And watched for my unworthy sake:
+ For your most comfortable hand
+ That led me through the uneven land:
+ For all the story-books you read:
+ For all the pains you comforted:
+ For all you pitied, all you bore,
+ In sad and happy days of yore:--
+ My second Mother, my first Wife,
+ The angel of my infant life--
+ From the sick child, now well and old,
+ Take, nurse, the little book you hold!_
+
+ _And grant it, Heaven, that all who read
+ May find as dear a nurse at need,
+ And every child who lists my rhyme,
+ In the bright, fireside, nursery clime,
+ May hear it in as kind a voice
+ As made my childish days rejoice!_
+
+ _R. L. S._
+
+
+
+
+A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES
+
+
+I
+
+BED IN SUMMER
+
+ In winter I get up at night
+ And dress by yellow candle-light.
+ In summer, quite the other way,--
+ I have to go to bed by day.
+
+ I have to go to bed and see
+ The birds still hopping on the tree,
+ Or hear the grown-up people's feet
+ Still going past me in the street.
+
+ And does it not seem hard to you,
+ When all the sky is clear and blue,
+ And I should like so much to play,
+ To have to go to bed by day?
+
+
+II
+
+A THOUGHT
+
+ It is very nice to think
+ The world is full of meat and drink,
+ With little children saying grace
+ In every Christian kind of place.
+
+
+III
+
+AT THE SEA-SIDE
+
+ When I was down beside the sea,
+ A wooden spade they gave to me
+ To dig the sandy shore.
+ My holes were empty like a cup,
+ In every hole the sea came up,
+ Till it could come no more.
+
+
+IV
+
+YOUNG NIGHT THOUGHT
+
+ All night long, and every night,
+ When my mamma puts out the light,
+ I see the people marching by,
+ As plain as day, before my eye.
+
+ Armies and emperors and kings,
+ All carrying different kinds of things,
+ And marching in so grand a way,
+ You never saw the like by day.
+
+ So fine a show was never seen
+ At the great circus on the green;
+ For every kind of beast and man
+ Is marching in that caravan.
+
+ At first they move a little slow,
+ But still the faster on they go,
+ And still beside them close I keep
+ Until we reach the town of Sleep.
+
+
+V
+
+WHOLE DUTY OF CHILDREN
+
+ A child should always say what's true,
+ And speak when he is spoken to,
+ And behave mannerly at table:
+ At least as far as he is able.
+
+
+VI
+
+RAIN
+
+ The rain is raining all around,
+ It falls on field and tree,
+ It rains on the umbrellas here,
+ And on the ships at sea.
+
+
+VII
+
+PIRATE STORY
+
+ Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing,
+ Three of us aboard in the basket on the lea.
+ Winds are in the air, they are blowing in the spring,
+ And waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea.
+
+ Where shall we adventure, to-day that we're afloat,
+ Wary of the weather, and steering by a star?
+ Shall it be to Africa, a-steering of the boat,
+ To Providence, or Babylon, or off to Malabar?
+
+ Hi! but here's a squadron a-rowing on the sea--
+ Cattle on the meadow a-charging with a roar!
+ Quick, and we'll escape them, they're as mad as they can be,
+ The wicket is the harbour and the garden is the shore.
+
+
+VIII
+
+FOREIGN LANDS
+
+ Up into the cherry-tree
+ Who should climb but little me?
+ I held the trunk with both my hands
+ And looked abroad on foreign lands.
+
+ I saw the next-door garden lie,
+ Adorned with flowers, before my eye,
+ And many pleasant places more
+ That I had never seen before.
+
+ I saw the dimpling river pass
+ And be the sky's blue looking-glass;
+ The dusty roads go up and down
+ With people tramping in to town.
+
+ If I could find a higher tree,
+ Farther and farther I should see
+ To where the grown-up river slips
+ Into the sea among the ships,
+
+ To where the roads on either hand
+ Lead onward into fairy-land,
+ Where all the children dine at five,
+ And all the playthings come alive.
+
+
+IX
+
+WINDY NIGHTS
+
+ Whenever the moon and stars are set,
+ Whenever the wind is high,
+ All night long in the dark and wet,
+ A man goes riding by.
+ Late in the night when the fires are out,
+ Why does he gallop and gallop about?
+
+ Whenever the trees are crying aloud,
+ And ships are tossed at sea,
+ By, on the highway, low and loud,
+ By at the gallop goes he.
+ By at the gallop he goes, and then
+ By he comes back at the gallop again.
+
+
+X
+
+TRAVEL
+
+ I should like to rise and go
+ Where the golden apples grow;--
+ Where below another sky
+ Parrot islands anchored lie,
+ And, watched by cockatoos and goats,
+ Lonely Crusoes building boats;--
+ Where in sunshine reaching out
+ Eastern cities, miles about,
+ Are with mosque and minaret
+ Among sandy gardens set,
+ And the rich goods from near and far
+ Hang for sale in the bazaar;--
+ Where the Great Wall round China goes,
+ And on one side the desert blows,
+ And with bell and voice and drum,
+ Cities on the other hum;--
+ Where are forests, hot as fire,
+ Wide as England, tall as a spire,
+ Full of apes and cocoa-nuts
+ And the negro hunters' huts;--
+ Where the knotty crocodile
+ Lies and blinks in the Nile,
+ And the red flamingo flies
+ Hunting fish before his eyes;--
+ Where in jungles, near and far,
+ Man-devouring tigers are,
+ Lying close and giving ear
+ Lest the hunt be drawing near,
+ Or a comer-by be seen
+ Swinging in a palanquin;--
+ Where among the desert sands
+ Some deserted city stands,
+ All its children, sweep and prince,
+ Grown to manhood ages since,
+ Not a foot in street or house,
+ Nor a stir of child or mouse,
+ And when kindly falls the night,
+ In all the town no spark of light.
+ There I'll come when I'm a man
+ With a camel caravan;
+ Light a fire in the gloom
+ Of some dusty dining-room;
+ See the pictures on the walls,
+ Heroes, fights, and festivals;
+ And in a corner find the toys
+ Of the old Egyptian boys.
+
+
+XI
+
+SINGING
+
+ Of speckled eggs the birdie sings
+ And nests among the trees;
+ The sailor sings of ropes and things
+ In ships upon the seas.
+
+ The children sing in far Japan,
+ The children sing in Spain;
+ The organ with the organ man
+ Is singing in the rain.
+
+
+XII
+
+LOOKING FORWARD
+
+ When I am grown to man's estate
+ I shall be very proud and great,
+ And tell the other girls and boys
+ Not to meddle with my toys.
+
+
+XIII
+
+A GOOD PLAY
+
+ We built a ship upon the stairs
+ All made of the back-bedroom chairs
+ And filled it full of sofa pillows
+ To go a-sailing on the billows.
+
+ We took a saw and several nails,
+ And water in the nursery pails;
+ And Tom said, "Let us also take
+ An apple and a slice of cake";--
+ Which was enough for Tom and me
+ To go a-sailing on, till tea.
+
+ We sailed along for days and days,
+ And had the very best of plays;
+ But Tom fell out and hurt his knee,
+ So there was no one left but me.
+
+
+XIV
+
+WHERE GO THE BOATS?
+
+ Dark brown is the river,
+ Golden is the sand.
+ It flows along for ever,
+ With trees on either hand.
+
+ Green leaves a-floating,
+ Castles of the foam,
+ Boats of mine a-boating--
+ Where will all come home?
+
+ On goes the river,
+ And out past the mill,
+ Away down the valley,
+ Away down the hill.
+
+ Away down the river,
+ A hundred miles or more,
+ Other little children
+ Shall bring my boats ashore.
+
+
+XV
+
+AUNTIE'S SKIRTS
+
+ Whenever Auntie moves around,
+ Her dresses make a curious sound;
+ They trail behind her up the floor,
+ And trundle after through the door.
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE LAND OF COUNTERPANE
+
+ When I was sick and lay a-bed,
+ I had two pillows at my head,
+ And all my toys beside me lay
+ To keep me happy all the day.
+
+ And sometimes for an hour or so
+ I watched my leaden soldiers go,
+ With different uniforms and drills,
+ Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;
+
+ And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
+ All up and down among the sheets;
+ Or brought my trees and houses out,
+ And planted cities all about.
+
+ I was the giant great and still
+ That sits upon the pillow-hill,
+ And sees before him, dale and plain,
+ The pleasant land of counterpane.
+
+
+XVII
+
+THE LAND OF NOD
+
+ From breakfast on all through the day
+ At home among my friends I stay;
+ But every night I go abroad
+ Afar into the land of Nod.
+
+ All by myself I have to go,
+ With none to tell me what to do--
+ All alone beside the streams
+ And up the mountain-sides of dreams.
+
+ The strangest things are there for me,
+ Both things to eat and things to see,
+ And many frightening sights abroad
+ Till morning in the land of Nod.
+
+ Try as I like to find the way,
+ I never can get back by day,
+ Nor can remember plain and clear
+ The curious music that I hear.
+
+
+XVIII
+
+MY SHADOW
+
+ I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
+ And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
+ He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
+ And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
+
+ The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--
+ Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
+ For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
+ And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.
+
+ He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
+ And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
+ He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;
+ I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
+
+ One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
+ I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
+ But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
+ Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
+
+
+XIX
+
+SYSTEM
+
+ Every night my prayers I say,
+ And get my dinner every day;
+ And every day that I've been good,
+ I get an orange after food.
+
+ The child that is not clean and neat,
+ With lots of toys and things to eat,
+ He is a naughty child, I'm sure--
+ Or else his dear papa is poor.
+
+
+XX
+
+A GOOD BOY
+
+ I woke before the morning, I was happy all the day,
+ I never said an ugly word, but smiled and stuck to play.
+
+ And now at last the sun is going down behind the wood,
+ And I am very happy, for I know that I've been good.
+
+ My bed is waiting cool and fresh, with linen smooth and fair,
+ And I must off to sleepsin-by, and not forget my prayer.
+
+ I know that, till to-morrow I shall see the sun arise,
+ No ugly dream shall fright my mind, no ugly sight my eyes,
+
+ But slumber hold me tightly till I waken in the dawn,
+ And hear the thrushes singing in the lilacs round the lawn.
+
+
+XXI
+
+ESCAPE AT BEDTIME
+
+ The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
+ Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
+ And high overhead and all moving about,
+ There were thousands of millions of stars.
+ There ne'er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,
+ Nor of people in church or the Park,
+ As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me,
+ And that glittered and winked in the dark.
+ The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,
+ And the star of the sailor, and Mars,
+ These shone in the sky, and the pail by the wall
+ Would be half full of water and stars.
+ They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,
+ And they soon had me packed into bed;
+ But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes,
+ And the stars going round in my head.
+
+
+XXII
+
+MARCHING SONG
+
+ Bring the comb and play upon it!
+ Marching, here we come!
+ Willie cocks his Highland bonnet,
+ Johnnie beats the drum.
+
+ Mary Jane commands the party,
+ Peter leads the rear;
+ Feet in time, alert and hearty,
+ Each a Grenadier!
+
+ All in the most martial manner
+ Marching double-quick;
+ While the napkin like a banner
+ Waves upon the stick!
+
+ Here's enough of fame and pillage,
+ Great commander Jane!
+ Now that we've been round the village,
+ Let's go home again.
+
+
+XXIII
+
+THE COW
+
+ The friendly cow, all red and white,
+ I love with all my heart:
+ She gives me cream with all her might,
+ To eat with apple-tart.
+
+ She wanders lowing here and there,
+ And yet she cannot stray,
+ All in the pleasant open air,
+ The pleasant light of day;
+
+ And blown by all the winds that pass,
+ And wet with all the showers,
+ She walks among the meadow grass
+ And eats the meadow flowers.
+
+
+XXIV
+
+HAPPY THOUGHT
+
+ The world is so full of a number of things,
+ I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
+
+
+XXV
+
+THE WIND
+
+ I saw you toss the kites on high
+ And blow the birds about the sky;
+ And all around I heard you pass,
+ Like ladies' skirts across the grass--
+ O wind, a-blowing all day long,
+ O wind, that sings so loud a song!
+
+ I saw the different things you did,
+ But always you yourself you hid.
+ I felt you push, I heard you call,
+ I could not see yourself at all--
+ O wind, a-blowing all day long,
+ O wind, that sings so loud a song!
+
+ O you that are so strong and cold,
+ O blower, are you young or old?
+ Are you a beast of field and tree,
+ Or just a stronger child than me?
+ O wind, a-blowing all day long,
+ O wind, that sings so loud a song!
+
+
+XXVI
+
+KEEPSAKE MILL
+
+ Over the borders, a sin without pardon,
+ Breaking the branches and crawling below,
+ Out through the breach in the wall of the garden,
+ Down by the banks of the river, we go.
+
+ Here is the mill with the humming of thunder,
+ Here is the weir with the wonder of foam,
+ Here is the sluice with the race running under--
+ Marvellous places, though handy to home!
+
+ Sounds of the village grow stiller and stiller,
+ Stiller the note of the birds on the hill;
+ Dusty and dim are the eyes of the miller,
+ Deaf are his ears with the moil of the mill.
+
+ Years may go by, and the wheel in the river,
+ Wheel as it wheels for us, children, to-day,
+ Wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever,
+ Long after all of the boys are away.
+
+ Home from the Indies, and home from the ocean,
+ Heroes and soldiers we all shall come home;
+ Still we shall find the old mill-wheel in motion,
+ Turning and churning that river to foam.
+
+ You with the bean that I gave when we quarrelled,
+ I with your marble of Saturday last,
+ Honoured and old and all gaily apparelled,
+ Here we shall meet and remember the past.
+
+
+XXVII
+
+GOOD AND BAD CHILDREN
+
+ Children, you are very little,
+ And your bones are very brittle;
+ If you would grow great and stately,
+ You must try to walk sedately.
+
+ You must still be bright and quiet,
+ And content with simple diet;
+ And remain, through all bewild'ring,
+ Innocent and honest children.
+
+ Happy hearts and happy faces,
+ Happy play in grassy places--
+ That was how, in ancient ages,
+ Children grew to kings and sages.
+
+ But the unkind and the unruly,
+ And the sort who eat unduly,
+ They must never hope for glory--
+ Theirs is quite a different story!
+
+ Cruel children, crying babies,
+ All grow up as geese and gabies,
+ Hated, as their age increases,
+ By their nephews and their nieces.
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+FOREIGN CHILDREN
+
+ Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,
+ Little frosty Eskimo,
+ Little Turk or Japanee,
+ O! don't you wish that you were me?
+
+ You have seen the scarlet trees
+ And the lions over seas;
+ You have eaten ostrich eggs,
+ And turned the turtles off their legs.
+
+ Such a life is very fine,
+ But it's not so nice as mine;
+ You must often, as you trod,
+ Have wearied _not_ to be abroad.
+
+ You have curious things to eat,
+ I am fed on proper meat;
+ You must dwell beyond the foam,
+ But I am safe and live at home.
+
+ Little Indian, Sioux or Crow
+ Little frosty Eskimo,
+ Little Turk or Japanee,
+ O! don't you wish that you were me?
+
+
+XXIX
+
+THE SUN'S TRAVELS
+
+ The sun is not a-bed when I
+ At night upon my pillow lie;
+ Still round the earth his way he takes,
+ And morning after morning makes.
+
+ While here at home, in shining day,
+ We round the sunny garden play,
+ Each little Indian sleepy-head
+ Is being kissed and put to bed.
+
+ And when at eve I rise from tea,
+ Day dawns beyond the Atlantic Sea,
+ And all the children in the West
+ Are getting up and being dressed.
+
+
+XXX
+
+THE LAMPLIGHTER
+
+ My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky;
+ It's time to take the window to see Leerie going by;
+ For every night at tea-time and before you take your seat,
+ With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.
+
+ Now Tom would be a driver and Maria go to sea,
+ And my papa's a banker and as rich as he can be;
+ But I, when I am stronger, and can choose what I'm to do,
+ O Leerie, I'll go round at night and light the lamps with you!
+
+ For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door,
+ And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more;
+ And O! before you hurry by with ladder and with light,
+ O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him to-night!
+
+
+XXXI
+
+MY BED IS A BOAT
+
+ My bed is like a little boat;
+ Nurse helps me in when I embark;
+ She girds me in my sailor's coat
+ And starts me in the dark.
+
+ At night, I go on board and say
+ Good-night to all my friends on shore;
+ I shut my eyes and sail away
+ And see and hear no more.
+
+ And sometimes things to bed I take,
+ As prudent sailors have to do:
+ Perhaps a slice of wedding-cake,
+ Perhaps a toy or two.
+
+ All night across the dark we steer:
+ But when the day returns at last,
+ Safe in my room, beside the pier,
+ I find my vessel fast.
+
+
+XXXII
+
+THE MOON
+
+ The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;
+ She shines on thieves on the garden wall,
+ On streets and fields and harbour quays,
+ And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.
+
+ The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,
+ The howling dog by the door of the house,
+ The bat that lies in bed at noon,
+ All love to be out by the light of the moon.
+
+ But all of the things that belong to the day
+ Cuddle to sleep to be out of her way;
+ And flowers and children close their eyes
+ Till up in the morning the sun shall arise.
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+THE SWING
+
+ How do you like to go up in a swing,
+ Up in the air so blue?
+ Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
+ Ever a child can do!
+
+ Up in the air and over the wall,
+ Till I can see so wide,
+ Rivers and trees and cattle and all
+ Over the countryside--
+
+ Till I look down on the garden green,
+ Down on the roof so brown--
+ Up in the air I go flying again,
+ Up in the air and down!
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+TIME TO RISE
+
+ A birdie with a yellow bill
+ Hopped upon the window sill,
+ Cocked his shining eye and said:
+ "Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-head?"
+
+
+XXXV
+
+LOOKING-GLASS RIVER
+
+ Smooth it slides upon its travel,
+ Here a wimple, there a gleam--
+ O the clean gravel!
+ O the smooth stream!
+
+ Sailing blossoms, silver fishes,
+ Paven pools as clear as air--
+ How a child wishes
+ To live down there!
+
+ We can see our coloured faces
+ Floating on the shaken pool
+ Down in cool places,
+ Dim and very cool;
+
+ Till a wind or water wrinkle,
+ Dipping marten, plumping trout,
+ Spreads in a twinkle
+ And blots all out.
+
+ See the rings pursue each other;
+ All below grows black as night,
+ Just as if mother
+ Had blown out the light!
+
+ Patience, children, just a minute--
+ See the spreading circles die;
+ The stream and all in it
+ Will clear by-and-by.
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+FAIRY BREAD
+
+ Come up here, O dusty feet!
+ Here is fairy bread to eat.
+ Here in my retiring room,
+ Children, you may dine
+ On the golden smell of broom
+ And the shade of pine;
+ And when you have eaten well,
+ Fairy stories hear and tell.
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+FROM A RAILWAY CARRIAGE
+
+ Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
+ Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
+ And charging along like troops in a battle,
+ All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
+ All of the sights of the hill and the plain
+ Fly as thick as driving rain;
+ And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
+ Painted stations whistle by.
+ Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
+ All by himself and gathering brambles;
+ Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
+ And there is the green for stringing the daisies!
+ Here is a cart run away in the road
+ Lumping along with man and load;
+ And here is a mill, and there is a river:
+ Each a glimpse and gone for ever!
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+WINTER-TIME
+
+ Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
+ A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
+ Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
+ A blood-red orange, sets again.
+
+ Before the stars have left the skies,
+ At morning in the dark I rise;
+ And shivering in my nakedness,
+ By the cold candle, bathe and dress.
+
+ Close by the jolly fire I sit
+ To warm my frozen bones a bit;
+ Or with a reindeer-sled explore
+ The colder countries round the door.
+
+ When, to go out, my nurse doth wrap
+ Me in my comforter and cap,
+ The cold wind burns my face, and blows
+ Its frosty pepper up my nose.
+
+ Black are my steps on silver sod;
+ Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;
+ And tree and house, and hill and lake,
+ Are frosted like a wedding-cake.
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+THE HAYLOFT
+
+ Through all the pleasant meadow-side
+ The grass grew shoulder-high,
+ Till the shining scythes went far and wide
+ And cut it down to dry.
+
+ These green and sweetly smelling crops
+ They led in waggons home;
+ And they piled them here in mountain tops
+ For mountaineers to roam.
+
+ Here is Mount Clear, Mount Rusty-Nail,
+ Mount Eagle and Mount High;--
+ The mice that in these mountains dwell
+ No happier are than I!
+
+ O what a joy to clamber there,
+ O what a place for play,
+ With the sweet, the dim, the dusty air,
+ The happy hills of hay.
+
+
+XL
+
+FAREWELL TO THE FARM
+
+ The coach is at the door at last;
+ The eager children, mounting fast
+ And kissing hands, in chorus sing:
+ Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!
+
+ To house and garden, field and lawn,
+ The meadow-gates we swang upon,
+ To pump and stable, tree and swing,
+ Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!
+
+ And fare you well for evermore,
+ O ladder at the hayloft door,
+ O hayloft where the cobwebs cling,
+ Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!
+
+ Crack goes the whip, and off we go;
+ The trees and houses smaller grow;
+ Last, round the woody turn we swing:
+ Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!
+
+
+XLI
+
+NORTH-WEST PASSAGE
+
+ 1. GOOD NIGHT
+
+ When the bright lamp is carried in,
+ The sunless hours again begin;
+ O'er all without, in field and lane,
+ The haunted night returns again.
+
+ Now we behold the embers flee
+ About the firelit hearth; and see
+ Our faces painted as we pass,
+ Like pictures, on the window-glass.
+
+ Must we to bed indeed? Well then,
+ Let us arise and go like men,
+ And face with an undaunted tread
+ The long black passage up to bed.
+
+ Farewell, O brother, sister, sire!
+ O pleasant party round the fire!
+ The songs you sing, the tales you tell,
+ Till far to-morrow, fare ye well!
+
+ 2. SHADOW MARCH
+
+ All round the house is the jet-black night;
+ It stares through the window-pane;
+ It crawls in the corners, hiding from the light,
+ And it moves with the moving flame.
+
+ Now my little heart goes a-beating like a drum,
+ With the breath of the Bogie in my hair;
+ And all round the candle the crooked shadows come
+ And go marching along up the stair.
+
+ The shadow of the balusters, the shadow of the lamp,
+ The shadow of the child that goes to bed--
+ All the wicked shadows coming, tramp, tramp, tramp,
+ With the black night overhead.
+
+ 3. IN PORT
+
+ Last, to the chamber where I lie
+ My fearful footsteps patter nigh,
+ And come from out the cold and gloom
+ Into my warm and cheerful room.
+
+ There, safe arrived, we turned about
+ To keep the coming shadows out,
+ And close the happy door at last
+ On all the perils that we passed.
+
+ Then, when mamma goes by to bed,
+ She shall come in with tip-toe tread,
+ And see me lying warm and fast
+ And in the land of Nod at last.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILD ALONE
+
+
+I
+
+THE UNSEEN PLAYMATE
+
+ When children are playing alone on the green,
+ In comes the playmate that never was seen.
+ When children are happy and lonely and good,
+ The Friend of the Children comes out of the wood.
+
+ Nobody heard him and nobody saw,
+ His is a picture you never could draw,
+ But he's sure to be present, abroad or at home,
+ When children are happy and playing alone.
+
+ He lies in the laurels, he runs on the grass,
+ He sings when you tinkle the musical glass;
+ Whene'er you are happy and cannot tell why,
+ The Friend of the Children is sure to be by!
+
+ He loves to be little, he hates to be big,
+ 'Tis he that inhabits the caves that you dig;
+ 'Tis he when you play with your soldiers of tin
+ That sides with the Frenchmen and never can win.
+
+ 'Tis he, when at night you go off to your bed,
+ Bids you go to your sleep and not trouble your head;
+ For wherever they're lying, in cupboard or shelf,
+ 'Tis he will take care of your playthings himself!
+
+
+II
+
+MY SHIP AND I
+
+ O it's I that am the captain of a tidy little ship,
+ Of a ship that goes a-sailing on the pond;
+ And my ship it keeps a-turning all around and all about;
+ But when I'm a little older, I shall find the secret out
+ How to send my vessel sailing on beyond.
+
+ For I mean to grow as little as the dolly at the helm,
+ And the dolly I intend to come alive;
+ And with him beside to help me, it's a-sailing I shall go,
+ It's a-sailing on the water, when the jolly breezes blow
+ And the vessel goes a divie-divie-dive.
+
+ O it's then you'll see me sailing through the rushes and the reeds,
+ And you'll hear the water singing at the prow;
+ For beside the dolly sailor, I'm to voyage and explore,
+ To land upon the island where no dolly was before,
+ And to fire the penny cannon in the bow.
+
+
+III
+
+MY KINGDOM
+
+ Down by a shining water well
+ I found a very little dell,
+ No higher than my head.
+ The heather and the gorse about
+ In summer bloom were coming out,
+ Some yellow and some red.
+
+ I called the little pool a sea;
+ The little hills were big to me;
+ For I am very small.
+ I made a boat, I made a town,
+ I searched the caverns up and down,
+ And named them one and all.
+
+ And all about was mine, I said,
+ The little sparrows overhead,
+ The little minnows too.
+ This was the world, and I was king;
+ For me the bees came by to sing,
+ For me the swallows flew.
+
+ I played there were no deeper seas,
+ Nor any wider plains than these,
+ Nor other kings than me.
+ At last I heard my mother call
+ Out from the house at even-fall,
+ To call me home to tea.
+
+ And I must rise and leave my dell,
+ And leave my dimpled water well,
+ And leave my heather blooms.
+ Alas! and as my home I neared,
+ How very big my nurse appeared,
+ How great and cool the rooms!
+
+
+IV
+
+PICTURE-BOOKS IN WINTER
+
+ Summer fading, winter comes--
+ Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs,
+ Window robins, winter rooks,
+ And the picture story-books.
+
+ Water now is turned to stone
+ Nurse and I can walk upon;
+ Still we find the flowing brooks
+ In the picture story-books.
+
+ All the pretty things put by
+ Wait upon the children's eye,
+ Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks,
+ In the picture story-books.
+
+ We may see how all things are,
+ Seas and cities, near and far,
+ And the flying fairies' looks,
+ In the picture story-books.
+
+ How am I to sing your praise,
+ Happy chimney-corner days,
+ Sitting safe in nursery nooks,
+ Reading picture story-books?
+
+
+V
+
+MY TREASURES
+
+ These nuts, that I keep in the back of the nest
+ Where all my lead soldiers are lying at rest,
+ Were gathered in autumn by nursie and me
+ In a wood with a well by the side of the sea.
+
+ This whistle we made (and how clearly it sounds!)
+ By the side of a field at the end of the grounds.
+ Of a branch of a plane, with a knife of my own,
+ It was nursie who made it, and nursie alone!
+
+ The stone, with the white and the yellow and grey,
+ We discovered I cannot tell _how_ far away;
+ And I carried it back, although weary and cold,
+ For, though father denies it, I'm sure it is gold.
+
+ But of all of my treasures the last is the king,
+ For there's very few children possess such a thing;
+ And that is a chisel, both handle and blade,
+ Which a man who was really a carpenter made.
+
+
+VI
+
+BLOCK CITY
+
+ What are you able to build with your blocks?
+ Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
+ Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
+ But I can be happy and building at home.
+
+ Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea,
+ There I'll establish a city for me:
+ A kirk and a mill and a palace beside,
+ And a harbour as well where my vessels may ride.
+
+ Great is the palace with pillar and wall,
+ A sort of a tower on the top of it all,
+ And steps coming down in an orderly way
+ To where my toy vessels lie safe in the bay.
+
+ This one is sailing and that one is moored:
+ Hark to the song of the sailors on board!
+ And see, on the steps of my palace, the kings
+ Coming and going with presents and things!
+
+ Now I have done with it, down let it go!
+ All in a moment the town is laid low.
+ Block upon block lying scattered and free,
+ What is there left of my town by the sea?
+
+ Yet, as I saw it, I see it again,
+ The kirk and the palace, the ships and the men,
+ And as long as I live, and where'er I may be,
+ I'll always remember my town by the sea.
+
+
+VII
+
+THE LAND OF STORY-BOOKS
+
+ At evening when the lamp is lit,
+ Around the fire my parents sit;
+ They sit at home and talk and sing,
+ And do not play at anything.
+
+ Now, with my little gun, I crawl
+ All in the dark along the wall,
+ And follow round the forest track
+ Away behind the sofa back.
+
+ There, in the night, where none can spy,
+ All in my hunter's camp I lie,
+ And play at books that I have read
+ Till it is time to go to bed.
+
+ These are the hills, these are the woods,
+ These are my starry solitudes;
+ And there the river by whose brink
+ The roaring lions come to drink.
+
+ I see the others far away
+ As if in firelit camp they lay,
+ And I, like to an Indian scout,
+ Around their party prowled about
+
+ So, when my nurse comes in for me,
+ Home I return across the sea,
+ And go to bed with backward looks
+ At my dear land of Story-books.
+
+
+VIII
+
+ARMIES IN THE FIRE
+
+ The lamps now glitter down the street;
+ Faintly sound the falling feet;
+ And the blue even slowly falls
+ About the garden trees and walls.
+
+ Now in the falling of the gloom
+ The red fire paints the empty room:
+ And warmly on the roof it looks,
+ And flickers on the backs of books.
+
+ Armies march by tower and spire
+ Of cities blazing, in the fire;--
+ Till as I gaze with staring eyes,
+ The armies fade, the lustre dies.
+
+ Then once again the glow returns;
+ Again the phantom city burns;
+ And down the red-hot valley, lo!
+ The phantom armies marching go!
+
+ Blinking embers, tell me true
+ Where are those armies marching to,
+ And what the burning city is
+ That crumbles in your furnaces!
+
+
+IX
+
+THE LITTLE LAND
+
+ When at home alone I sit
+ And am very tired of it,
+ I have just to shut my eyes
+ To go sailing through the skies--
+ To go sailing far away
+ To the pleasant Land of Play;
+ To the fairy land afar
+ Where the Little People are;
+ Where the clover-tops are trees,
+ And the rain-pools are the seas,
+ And the leaves like little ships
+ Sail about on tiny trips;
+ And above the daisy tree
+ Through the grasses,
+ High o'erhead the Bumble Bee
+ Hums and passes.
+
+ In that forest to and fro
+ I can wander, I can go;
+ See the spider and the fly,
+ And the ants go marching by
+ Carrying parcels with their feet
+ Down the green and grassy street.
+ I can in the sorrel sit
+ Where the ladybird alit.
+ I can climb the jointed grass;
+ And on high
+ See the greater swallows pass
+ In the sky,
+ And the round sun rolling by
+ Heeding no such things as I.
+
+ Through that forest I can pass
+ Till, as in a looking-glass,
+ Humming fly and daisy tree
+ And my tiny self I see
+ Painted very clear and neat
+ On the rain-pool at my feet.
+ Should a leaflet come to land
+ Drifting near to where I stand,
+ Straight I'll board that tiny boat
+ Round the rain-pool sea to float.
+
+ Little thoughtful creatures sit
+ On the grassy coasts of it;
+ Little things with lovely eyes
+ See me sailing with surprise.
+ Some are clad in armour green--
+ (These have sure to battle been!)--
+ Some are pied with ev'ry hue,
+ Black and crimson, gold and blue;
+ Some have wings and swift are gone;--
+ But they all look kindly on.
+
+ When my eyes I once again
+ Open and see all things plain;
+ High bare walls, great bare floor;
+ Great big knobs on drawer and door;
+ Great big people perched on chairs,
+ Stitching tucks and mending tears,
+ Each a hill that I could climb,
+ And talking nonsense all the time--
+ O dear me,
+ That I could be
+ A sailor on the rain-pool sea,
+ A climber in the clover-tree,
+ And just come back, a sleepy-head,
+ Late at night to go to bed.
+
+
+
+
+GARDEN DAYS
+
+
+I
+
+NIGHT AND DAY
+
+ When the golden day is done,
+ Through the closing portal,
+ Child and garden, flower and sun,
+ Vanish all things mortal.
+
+ As the blinding shadows fall,
+ As the rays diminish,
+ Under evening's cloak, they all
+ Roll away and vanish.
+
+ Garden darkened, daisy shut,
+ Child in bed, they slumber--
+ Glow-worm in the highway rut,
+ Mice among the lumber.
+
+ In the darkness houses shine,
+ Parents move with candles;
+ Till on all the night divine
+ Turns the bedroom handles.
+
+ Till at last the day begins
+ In the east a-breaking,
+ In the hedges and the whins
+ Sleeping birds a-waking.
+
+ In the darkness shapes of things,
+ Houses, trees, and hedges,
+ Clearer grow; and sparrows' wings
+ Beat on window ledges.
+
+ These shall wake the yawning maid;
+ She the door shall open--
+ Finding dew on garden glade
+ And the morning broken.
+
+ There my garden grows again
+ Green and rosy painted,
+ As at eve behind the pane
+ From my eyes it fainted.
+
+ Just as it was shut away,
+ Toy-like, in the even,
+ Here I see it glow with day
+ Under glowing heaven.
+
+ Every path and every plot,
+ Every bush of roses,
+ Every blue forget-me-not
+ Where the dew reposes,
+
+ "Up!" they cry, "the day is come
+ On the smiling valleys:
+ We have beat the morning drum;
+ Playmate, join your allies!"
+
+
+II
+
+NEST EGGS
+
+ Birds all the sunny day
+ Flutter and quarrel,
+ Here in the arbour-like
+ Tent of the laurel.
+
+ Here in the fork
+ The brown nest is seated;
+ Four little blue eggs
+ The mother keeps heated.
+
+ While we stand watching her,
+ Staring like gabies,
+ Safe in each egg are the
+ Bird's little babies.
+
+ Soon the frail eggs they shall
+ Chip, and upspringing
+ Make all the April woods
+ Merry with singing.
+
+ Younger than we are,
+ O children, and frailer,
+ Soon in blue air they'll be,
+ Singer and sailor.
+
+ We, so much older,
+ Taller and stronger,
+ We shall look down on the
+ Birdies no longer.
+
+ They shall go flying
+ With musical speeches
+ High overhead in the
+ Tops of the beeches.
+
+ In spite of our wisdom
+ And sensible talking,
+ We on our feet must go
+ Plodding and walking.
+
+
+III
+
+THE FLOWERS
+
+ All the names I know from nurse:
+ Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,
+ Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,
+ And the Lady Hollyhock.
+
+ Fairy places, fairy things,
+ Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
+ Tiny trees for tiny dames--
+ These must all be fairy names!
+
+ Tiny woods below whose boughs
+ Shady fairies weave a house;
+ Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
+ Where the braver fairies climb!
+
+ Fair are grown-up people's trees,
+ But the fairest woods are these;
+ Where if I were not so tall,
+ I should live for good and all.
+
+
+IV
+
+SUMMER SUN
+
+ Great is the sun, and wide he goes
+ Through empty heaven without repose;
+ And in the blue and glowing days
+ More thick than rain he showers his rays.
+
+ Though closer still the blinds we pull
+ To keep the shady parlour cool,
+ Yet he will find a chink or two
+ To slip his golden fingers through.
+
+ The dusty attic, spider-clad,
+ He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;
+ And through the broken edge of tiles
+ Into the laddered hayloft smiles.
+
+ Meantime his golden face around
+ He bares to all the garden ground,
+ And sheds a warm and glittering look
+ Among the ivy's inmost nook.
+
+ Above the hills, along the blue,
+ Round the bright air with footing true,
+ To please the child, to paint the rose,
+ The gardener of the World, he goes.
+
+
+V
+
+THE DUMB SOLDIER
+
+ When the grass was closely mown,
+ Walking on the lawn alone,
+ In the turf a hole I found
+ And hid a soldier underground.
+
+ Spring and daisies came apace;
+ Grasses hide my hiding-place;
+ Grasses run like a green sea
+ O'er the lawn up to my knee.
+
+ Under grass alone he lies,
+ Looking up with leaden eyes,
+ Scarlet coat and pointed gun,
+ To the stars and to the sun.
+
+ When the grass is ripe like grain,
+ When the scythe is stoned again,
+ When the lawn is shaven clear,
+ Then my hole shall reappear.
+
+ I shall find him, never fear,
+ I shall find my grenadier;
+ But, for all that's gone and come,
+ I shall find my soldier dumb.
+
+ He has lived, a little thing,
+ In the grassy woods of spring;
+ Done, if he could tell me true,
+ Just as I should like to do.
+
+ He has seen the starry hours
+ And the springing of the flowers;
+ And the fairy things that pass
+ In the forests of the grass.
+
+ In the silence he has heard
+ Talking bee and ladybird,
+ And the butterfly has flown
+ O'er him as he lay alone.
+
+ Not a word will he disclose,
+ Not a word of all he knows.
+ I must lay him on the shelf,
+ And make up the tale myself.
+
+
+VI
+
+AUTUMN FIRES
+
+ In the other gardens
+ And all up the vale,
+ From the autumn bonfires
+ See the smoke trail!
+
+ Pleasant summer over,
+ And all the summer flowers,
+ The red fire blazes,
+ The grey smoke towers.
+
+ Sing a song of seasons!
+ Something bright in all!
+ Flowers in the summer,
+ Fires in the fall!
+
+
+VII
+
+THE GARDENER
+
+ The gardener does not love to talk,
+ He makes me keep the gravel walk;
+ And when he puts his tools away,
+ He locks the door and takes the key.
+
+ Away behind the currant row
+ Where no one else but cook may go,
+ Far in the plots, I see him dig,
+ Old and serious, brown and big.
+
+ He digs the flowers, green, red, and blue,
+ Nor wishes to be spoken to.
+ He digs the flowers and cuts the hay,
+ And never seems to want to play.
+
+ Silly gardener! summer goes,
+ And winter comes with pinching toes,
+ When in the garden bare and brown
+ You must lay your barrow down.
+
+ Well now, and while the summer stays,
+ To profit by these garden days,
+ O how much wiser you would be
+ To play at Indian wars with me!
+
+
+VIII
+
+HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS
+
+ Dear Uncle Jim, this garden ground,
+ That now you smoke your pipe around,
+ Has seen immortal actions done
+ And valiant battles lost and won.
+
+ Here we had best on tip-toe tread,
+ While I for safety march ahead,
+ For this is that enchanted ground
+ Where all who loiter slumber sound.
+
+ Here is the sea, here is the sand,
+ Here is simple Shepherd's Land,
+ Here are the fairy hollyhocks,
+ And there are Ali Baba's rocks.
+
+ But yonder, see! apart and high,
+ Frozen Siberia lies; where I,
+ With Robert Bruce and William Tell,
+ Was bound by an enchanter's spell.
+
+ There, then, a while in chains we lay,
+ In wintry dungeons, far from day;
+ But ris'n at length, with might and main,
+ Our iron fetters burst in twain.
+
+ Then all the horns were blown in town;
+ And, to the ramparts clanging down,
+ All the giants leaped to horse
+ And charged behind us through the gorse.
+
+ On we rode, the others and I,
+ Over the mountains blue, and by
+ The Silver River, the sounding sea,
+ And the robber woods of Tartary.
+
+ A thousand miles we galloped fast,
+ And down the witches' lane we passed,
+ And rode amain, with brandished sword,
+ Up to the middle, through the ford.
+
+ Last we drew rein--a weary three--
+ Upon the lawn, in time for tea,
+ And from our steeds alighted down
+ Before the gates of Babylon.
+
+
+
+
+ENVOYS
+
+
+I
+
+TO WILLIE AND HENRIETTA
+
+ If two may read aright
+ These rhymes of old delight
+ And house and garden play,
+ You two, my cousins, and you only, may.
+
+ You in a garden green
+ With me were king and queen,
+ Were hunter, soldier, tar,
+ And all the thousand things that children are.
+
+ Now in the elders' seat
+ We rest with quiet feet,
+ And from the window-bay
+ We watch the children, our successors, play.
+
+ "Time was," the golden head
+ Irrevocably said;
+ But time which none can bind,
+ While flowing fast away, leaves love behind.
+
+
+II
+
+TO MY MOTHER
+
+ You too, my mother, read my rhymes
+ For love of unforgotten times,
+ And you may chance to hear once more
+ The little feet along the floor.
+
+
+III
+
+TO AUNTIE
+
+ _Chief of our aunts_--not only I,
+ But all your dozen of nurslings cry--
+ _What did the other children do?
+ And what were childhood, wanting you?_
+
+
+IV
+
+TO MINNIE
+
+ The red room with the giant bed
+ Where none but elders lay their head;
+ The little room where you and I
+ Did for a while together lie,
+ And, simple suitor, I your hand
+ In decent marriage did demand;
+ The great day-nursery, best of all,
+ With pictures pasted on the wall
+ And leaves upon the blind--
+ A pleasant room wherein to wake
+ And hear the leafy garden shake
+ And rustle in the wind--
+ And pleasant there to lie in bed
+ And see the pictures overhead--
+ The wars about Sebastopol,
+ The grinning guns along the wall,
+ The daring escalade,
+ The plunging ships, the bleating sheep,
+ The happy children ankle-deep,
+ And laughing as they wade:
+ All these are vanished clean away,
+ And the old manse is changed to-day;
+ It wears an altered face
+ And shields a stranger race.
+ The river, on from mill to mill,
+ Flows past our childhood's garden still;
+ But ah! we children never more
+ Shall watch it from the water-door!
+ Below the yew--it still is there--
+ Our phantom voices haunt the air
+ As we were still at play,
+ And I can hear them call and say:
+ "_How far is it to Babylon?_"
+
+ Ah, far enough, my dear,
+ Far, far enough from here--
+ Yet you have farther gone!
+ "_Can I get there by candlelight?_"
+ So goes the old refrain.
+ I do not know--perchance you might--
+ But only, children, hear it right,
+ Ah, never to return again!
+ The eternal dawn, beyond a doubt,
+ Shall break on hill and plain,
+ And put all stars and candles out,
+ Ere we be young again.
+
+ To you in distant India, these
+ I send across the seas,
+ Nor count it far across.
+ For which of us forgets
+ The Indian cabinets,
+ The bones of antelope, the wings of albatross,
+ The pied and painted birds and beans,
+ The junks and bangles, beads and screens,
+ The gods and sacred bells,
+ And the loud-humming, twisted shells?
+ The level of the parlour floor
+ Was honest, homely, Scottish shore;
+ But when we climbed upon a chair,
+ Behold the gorgeous East was there!
+ Be this a fable; and behold
+ Me in the parlour as of old,
+ And Minnie just above me set
+ In the quaint Indian cabinet!
+ Smiling and kind, you grace a shelf
+ Too high for me to reach myself.
+ Reach down a hand, my dear, and take
+ These rhymes for old acquaintance' sake.
+
+
+V
+
+TO MY NAME-CHILD
+
+ 1
+
+ Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed,
+ Little Louis Sanchez, will be given you to read.
+ Then shall you discover that your name was printed down
+ By the English printers, long before, in London town.
+
+ In the great and busy city where the East and West are met,
+ All the little letters did the English printer set;
+ While you thought of nothing, and were still too young to play,
+ Foreign people thought of you in places far away.
+
+ Ay, and while you slept, a baby, over all the English lands
+ Other little children took the volume in their hands;
+ Other children questioned, in their homes across the seas:
+ Who was little Louis, won't you tell us, mother, please?
+
+ 2
+
+ Now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and play,
+ Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey,
+ Watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried by the breeze,
+ Tiny sandy-pipers, and the huge Pacific seas.
+
+ And remember in your playing, as the sea-fog rolls to you,
+ Long ere you could read it, how I told you what to do;
+ And that while you thought of no one, nearly half the world away
+ Some one thought of Louis on the beach of Monterey!
+
+
+VI
+
+TO ANY READER
+
+ As from the house your mother sees
+ You playing round the garden trees,
+ So you may see, if you will look
+ Through the windows of this book,
+ Another child, far, far away,
+ And in another garden, play.
+ But do not think you can at all,
+ By knocking on the window, call
+ That child to hear you. He intent
+ Is all on his play-business bent.
+ He does not hear; he will not look,
+ Not yet be lured out of this book.
+ For, long ago, the truth to say,
+ He has grown up and gone away,
+ And it is but a child of air
+ That lingers in the garden there.
+
+
+
+
+UNDERWOODS
+
+
+ _Of all my verse, like not a single line;
+ But like my title, for it is not mine.
+ That title from a better man I stole;
+ Ah, how much better, had I stol'n the whole!_
+
+
+_DEDICATION_
+
+_There are men and classes of men that stand above the common herd: the
+soldier, the sailor, and the shepherd not unfrequently; the artist
+rarely; rarelier still, the clergyman; the physician almost as a rule.
+He is the flower (such as it is) of our civilisation; and when that
+stage of man is done with, and only remembered to be marvelled at in
+history, he will be thought to have shared as little as any in the
+defects of the period, and most notably exhibited the virtues of the
+race. Generosity he has, such as is possible to those who practise an
+art, never to those who drive a trade; discretion, tested by a hundred
+secrets; tact, tried in a thousand embarrassments; and, what are more
+important, Heraclean cheerfulness and courage. So it is that he brings
+air and cheer into the sickroom, and often enough, though not so often
+as he wishes, brings healing._
+
+_Gratitude is but a lame sentiment; thanks, when they are expressed, are
+often more embarrassing than welcome; and yet I must set forth mine to a
+few out of many doctors who have brought me comfort and help: to_ Dr.
+Willey _of San Francisco, whose kindness to a stranger it must be as
+grateful to him, as it is touching to me, to remember; to_ Dr. Karl
+Ruedi _of Davos, the good genius of the English in his frosty mountains;
+to_ Dr. Herbert _of Paris, whom I knew only for a week, and to_ Dr.
+Caissot _of Montpellier, whom I knew only for ten days, and who have yet
+written their names deeply in my memory; to_ Dr. Brandt _of Royat; to_
+Dr. Wakefield _of Nice; to_ Dr. Chepmell, _whose visits make it a
+pleasure to be ill; to_ Dr. Horace Dobell, _so wise in counsel; to_ Sir
+Andrew Clark, _so unwearied in kindness; and to that wise youth, my
+uncle_, Dr. Balfour.
+
+_I forget as many as I remember; and I ask both to pardon me, these for
+silence, those for inadequate speech. But one name I have kept on
+purpose to the last, because it is a household word with me, and because
+if I had not received favours from so many hands and in so many quarters
+of the world, it should have stood upon this page alone: that of my
+friend _Thomas Bodley Scott_ of Bournemouth. Will he accept this,
+although shared among so many, for a dedication to himself? and when
+next my ill-fortune (which has thus its pleasant side) brings him
+hurrying to me when he would fain sit down to meat or lie down to rest,
+will he care to remember that he takes this trouble for one who is not
+fool enough to be ungrateful?_
+
+ _R. L. S._
+
+ _Skerryvore,
+ Bournemouth._
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+IN ENGLISH
+
+
+UNDERWOODS
+
+
+I
+
+ENVOY
+
+ Go, little book, and wish to all
+ Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall,
+ A bin of wine, a spice of wit,
+ A house with lawns enclosing it,
+ A living river by the door,
+ A nightingale in the sycamore!
+
+
+II
+
+A SONG OF THE ROAD
+
+ The gauger walked with willing foot,
+ And aye the gauger played the flute;
+ And what should Master Gauger play
+ But _Over the hills and far away_?
+
+ Whene'er I buckle on my pack
+ And foot it gaily in the track,
+ O pleasant gauger, long since dead,
+ I hear you fluting on ahead.
+
+ You go with me the selfsame way--
+ The selfsame air for me you play;
+ For I do think and so do you
+ It is the tune to travel to.
+
+ For who would gravely set his face
+ To go to this or t'other place?
+ There's nothing under heav'n so blue
+ That's fairly worth the travelling to.
+
+ On every hand the roads begin,
+ And people walk with zeal therein;
+ But wheresoe'er the highways tend,
+ Be sure there's nothing at the end.
+
+ Then follow you, wherever hie
+ The travelling mountains of the sky.
+ Or let the streams in civil mode
+ Direct your choice upon a road;
+
+ For one and all, or high or low,
+ Will lead you where you wish to go;
+ And one and all go night and day
+ _Over the hills and far away_!
+
+ FOREST OF MONTARGIS, 1878.
+
+
+III
+
+THE CANOE SPEAKS
+
+ On the great streams the ships may go
+ About men's business to and fro.
+ But I, the egg-shell pinnace, sleep
+ On crystal waters ankle-deep:
+ I, whose diminutive design,
+ Of sweeter cedar, pithier pine,
+ Is fashioned on so frail a mould,
+ A hand may launch, a hand withhold:
+ I, rather, with the leaping trout
+ Wind, among lilies, in and out;
+ I, the unnamed, inviolate,
+ Green, rustic rivers navigate;
+ My dipping paddle scarcely shakes
+ The berry in the bramble-brakes;
+ Still forth on my green way I wend
+ Beside the cottage garden-end;
+ And by the nested angler fare,
+ And take the lovers unaware.
+ By willow wood and water-wheel
+ Speedily fleets my touching keel;
+ By all retired and shady spots
+ Where prosper dim forget-me-nots;
+ By meadows where at afternoon
+ The growing maidens troop in June
+ To loose their girdles on the grass.
+ Ah! speedier than before the glass
+ The backward toilet goes; and swift
+ As swallows quiver, robe and shift
+ And the rough country stockings lie
+ Around each young divinity.
+ When, following the recondite brook,
+ Sudden upon this scene I look,
+ And light with unfamiliar face
+ On chaste Diana's bathing-place,
+ Loud ring the hills about and all
+ The shallows are abandoned....
+
+
+IV
+
+ It is the season now to go
+ About the country high and low,
+ Among the lilacs hand in hand,
+ And two by two in fairyland.
+
+ The brooding boy, the sighing maid,
+ Wholly fain and half afraid,
+ Now meet along the hazel'd brook
+ To pass and linger, pause and look.
+
+ A year ago, and blithely paired,
+ Their rough-and-tumble play they shared;
+ They kissed and quarrelled, laughed and cried,
+ A year ago at Eastertide.
+
+ With bursting heart, with fiery face,
+ She strove against him in the race;
+ He unabashed her garter saw,
+ That now would touch her skirts with awe.
+
+ Now by the stile ablaze she stops,
+ And his demurer eyes he drops;
+ Now they exchange averted sighs
+ Or stand and marry silent eyes.
+
+ And he to her a hero is
+ And sweeter she than primroses;
+ Their common silence dearer far
+ Than nightingale and mavis are.
+
+ Now when they sever wedded hands,
+ Joy trembles in their bosom-strands
+ And lovely laughter leaps and falls
+ Upon their lips in madrigals.
+
+
+V
+
+THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL
+
+ _A naked house, a naked moor,
+ A shivering pool before the door,
+ A garden bare of flowers and fruit
+ And poplars at the garden foot:
+ Such is the place that I live in,
+ Bleak without and bare within._
+
+ Yet shall your ragged moor receive
+ The incomparable pomp of eve,
+ And the cold glories of the dawn
+ Behind your shivering trees be drawn;
+ And when the wind from place to place
+ Doth the unmoored cloud-galleons chase,
+ Your garden gloom and gleam again,
+ With leaping sun, with glancing rain.
+ Here shall the wizard moon ascend
+ The heavens, in the crimson end
+ Of day's declining splendour; here
+ The army of the stars appear.
+ The neighbour hollows, dry or wet,
+ Spring shall with tender flowers beset;
+ And oft the morning muser see
+ Larks rising from the broomy lea,
+ And every fairy wheel and thread
+ Of cobweb, dew-bediamonded.
+ When daisies go, shall winter-time
+ Silver the simple grass with rime;
+ Autumnal frosts enchant the pool
+ And make the cart-ruts beautiful;
+ And when snow-bright the moor expands,
+ How shall your children clap their hands!
+ To make this earth, our hermitage,
+ A cheerful and a changeful page,
+ God's bright and intricate device
+ Of days and seasons doth suffice.
+
+
+VI
+
+A VISIT FROM THE SEA
+
+ Far from the loud sea beaches
+ Where he goes fishing and crying,
+ Here in the inland garden
+ Why is the sea-gull flying?
+
+ Here are no fish to dive for;
+ Here is the corn and lea;
+ Here are the green trees rustling.
+ Hie away home to sea!
+
+ Fresh is the river water
+ And quiet among the rushes;
+ This is no home for the sea-gull,
+ But for the rooks and thrushes.
+
+ Pity the bird that has wandered!
+ Pity the sailor ashore!
+ Hurry him home to the ocean,
+ Let him come here no more!
+
+ High on the sea-cliff ledges
+ The white gulls are trooping and crying,
+ Here among rooks and roses,
+ Why is the sea-gull flying?
+
+
+VII
+
+TO A GARDENER
+
+ Friend, in my mountain-side demesne,
+ My plain-beholding, rosy, green
+ And linnet-haunted garden-ground,
+ Let still the esculents abound.
+ Let first the onion flourish there,
+ Rose among roots, the maiden-fair,
+ Wine-scented and poetic soul
+ Of the capacious salad-bowl.
+ Let thyme the mountaineer (to dress
+ The tinier birds) and wading cress,
+ The lover of the shallow brook,
+ From all my plots and borders look.
+ Nor crisp and ruddy radish, nor
+ Pease-cods for the child's pinafore
+ Be lacking; nor of salad clan
+ The last and least that ever ran
+ About great nature's garden-beds.
+ Nor thence be missed the speary heads
+ Of artichoke; nor thence the bean
+ That gathered innocent and green
+ Outsavours the belauded pea.
+
+ These tend, I prithee; and for me,
+ Thy most long-suffering master, bring
+ In April, when the linnets sing
+ And the days lengthen more and more,
+ At sundown to the garden door.
+ And I, being provided thus,
+ Shall, with superb asparagus,
+ A book, a taper, and a cup
+ Of country wine, divinely sup.
+
+ LA SOLITUDE, HYÈRES.
+
+
+VIII
+
+TO MINNIE
+
+(WITH A HAND-GLASS)
+
+ A picture-frame for you to fill,
+ A paltry setting for your face,
+ A thing that has no worth until
+ You lend it something of your grace,
+
+ I send (unhappy I that sing
+ Laid by a while upon the shelf)
+ Because I would not send a thing
+ Less charming than you are yourself.
+
+ And happier than I, alas!
+ (Dumb thing, I envy its delight)
+ 'Twill wish you well, the looking-glass,
+ And look you in the face to-night.
+
+ 1869.
+
+
+IX
+
+TO K. DE M.
+
+ A lover of the moorland bare
+ And honest country winds you were;
+ The silver-skimming rain you took;
+ And love the floodings of the brook,
+ Dew, frost and mountains, fire and seas,
+ Tumultuary silences,
+ Winds that in darkness fifed a tune,
+ And the high-riding, virgin moon.
+
+ And as the berry, pale and sharp,
+ Springs on some ditch's counterscarp
+ In our ungenial, native north--
+ You put your frosted wildings forth,
+ And on the heath, afar from man,
+ A strong and bitter virgin ran.
+
+ The berry ripened keeps the rude
+ And racy flavour of the wood.
+ And you that loved the empty plain
+ All redolent of wind and rain,
+ Around you still the curlew sings--
+ The freshness of the weather clings--
+ The maiden jewels of the rain
+ Sit in your dabbled locks again.
+
+
+X
+
+TO N. V. DE G. S.
+
+ The unfathomable sea, and time, and tears,
+ The deeds of heroes and the crimes of kings
+ Dispart us; and the river of events
+ Has, for an age of years, to east and west
+ More widely borne our cradles. Thou to me
+ Art foreign, as when seamen at the dawn
+ Descry a land far off, and know not which.
+ So I approach uncertain; so I cruise
+ Round thy mysterious islet, and behold
+ Surf and great mountains and loud river-bars,
+ And from the shore hear inland voices call.
+ Strange is the seaman's heart; he hopes, he fears;
+ Draws closer and sweeps wider from that coast;
+ Last, his rent sail refits, and to the deep
+ His shattered prow uncomforted puts back.
+ Yet as he goes he ponders at the helm
+ Of that bright island; where he feared to touch,
+ His spirit re-adventures; and for years,
+ Where by his wife he slumbers safe at home,
+ Thoughts of that land revisit him; he sees
+ The eternal mountains beckon, and awakes
+ Yearning for that far home that might have been.
+
+
+XI
+
+TO WILL. H. LOW
+
+ Youth now flees on feathered foot,
+ Faint and fainter sounds the flute,
+ Rarer songs of gods; and still
+ Somewhere on the sunny hill,
+ Or along the winding stream,
+ Through the willows, flits a dream;
+ Flits but shows a smiling face,
+ Flees, but with so quaint a grace,
+ None can choose to stay at home,
+ All must follow, all must roam.
+
+ This is unborn beauty: she
+ Now in air floats high and free.
+ Takes the sun and makes the blue;--
+ Late with stooping pinion flew
+ Raking hedgerow trees, and wet
+ Her wing in silver streams, and set
+ Shining foot on temple roof:
+ Now again she flies aloof,
+ Coasting mountain clouds and kiss't
+ By the evening's amethyst.
+ In wet wood and miry lane,
+ Still we pant and pound in vain;
+ Still with leaden foot we chase
+ Waning pinion, fainting face;
+ Still with grey hair we stumble on,
+ Till, behold, the vision gone!
+ Where hath fleeting beauty led?
+ To the doorway of the dead.
+ Life is over, life was gay:
+ We have come the primrose way.
+
+
+XII
+
+TO MRS. WILL. H. LOW
+
+ Even in the bluest noonday of July,
+ There could not run the smallest breath of wind
+ But all the quarter sounded like a wood;
+ And in the chequered silence and above
+ The hum of city cabs that sought the Bois,
+ Suburban ashes shivered into song.
+ A patter and a chatter and a chirp
+ And a long dying hiss--it was as though
+ Starched old brocaded dames through all the house
+ Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky
+ Even in a wink had over-brimmed in rain.
+ Hark, in these shady parlours, how it talks
+ Of the near Autumn, how the smitten ash
+ Trembles and augurs floods! O not too long
+ In these inconstant latitudes delay,
+ O not too late from the unbeloved north
+ Trim your escape! For soon shall this low roof
+ Resound indeed with rain, soon shall your eyes
+ Search the foul garden, search the darkened rooms,
+ Nor find one jewel but the blazing log.
+
+ 12 RUE VERNIER, PARIS.
+
+
+XIII
+
+TO H. F. BROWN
+
+(WRITTEN DURING A DANGEROUS SICKNESS)
+
+ I sit and wait a pair of oars
+ On cis-Elysian river-shores.
+ Where the immortal dead have sate,
+ 'Tis mine to sit and meditate;
+ To re-ascend life's rivulet,
+ Without remorse, without regret;
+ And sing my _Alma Genetrix_
+ Among the willows of the Styx.
+
+ And lo, as my serener soul
+ Did these unhappy shores patrol,
+ And wait with an attentive ear
+ The coming of the gondolier,
+ Your fire-surviving roll I took,
+ Your spirited and happy book;[1]
+ Whereon, despite my frowning fate,
+ It did my soul so recreate
+ That all my fancies fled away
+ On a Venetian holiday.
+
+ Now, thanks to your triumphant care,
+ Your pages clear as April air,
+ The sails, the bells, the birds, I know,
+ And the far-off Friulan snow;
+ The land and sea, the sun and shade,
+ And the blue even lamp-inlaid.
+ For this, for these, for all, O friend,
+ For your whole book from end to end--
+ For Paron Piero's mutton-ham--
+ I your defaulting debtor am.
+
+ Perchance, reviving, yet may I
+ To your sea-paven city hie,
+ And in a _felze_ some day yet
+ Light at your pipe my cigarette.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+ [1] "Life on the Lagoons," by H. F. Brown, originally burned in the
+ fire at Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.'s.
+
+
+XIV
+
+TO ANDREW LANG
+
+ Dear Andrew, with the brindled hair,
+ Who glory to have thrown in air,
+ High over arm, the trembling reed,
+ By Ale and Kail, by Till and Tweed:
+ An equal craft of hand you show
+ The pen to guide, the fly to throw:
+ I count you happy-starred; for God,
+ When He with inkpot and with rod
+ Endowed you, bade your fortune lead
+ For ever by the crooks of Tweed,
+ For ever by the woods of song
+ And lands that to the Muse belong;
+ Or if in peopled streets, or in
+ The abhorred pedantic sanhedrin,
+ It should be yours to wander, still
+ Airs of the morn, airs of the hill,
+ The plovery Forest and the seas
+ That break about the Hebrides,
+ Should follow over field and plain
+ And find you at the window-pane;
+ And you again see hill and peel,
+ And the bright springs gush at your heel.
+ So went the fiat forth, and so
+ Garrulous like a brook you go,
+ With sound of happy mirth and sheen
+ Of daylight--whether by the green
+ You fare that moment, or the grey;
+ Whether you dwell in March or May;
+ Or whether treat of reels and rods
+ Or of the old unhappy gods:
+ Still like a brook your page has shone,
+ And your ink sings of Helicon.
+
+
+XV
+
+ET TU IN ARCADIA VIXISTI
+
+(TO R. A. M. S.)
+
+ In ancient tales, O friend, thy spirit dwelt;
+ There, from of old, thy childhood passed; and there
+ High expectation, high delights and deeds,
+ Thy fluttering heart with hope and terror moved.
+ And thou hast heard of yore the Blatant Beast,
+ And Roland's horn, and that war-scattering shout
+ Of all-unarmed Achilles, ægis-crowned.
+ And perilous lands thou sawest, sounding shores
+ And seas and forests drear, island and dale
+ And mountain dark. For thou with Tristram rod'st
+ Or Bedevere, in farthest Lyonesse.
+ Thou hadst a booth in Samarcand, whereat
+ Side-looking Magians trafficked; thence, by night,
+ An Afreet snatched thee, and with wings upbore
+ Beyond the Aral Mount; or, hoping gain,
+ Thou, with a jar of money, didst embark
+ For Balsorah by sea. But chiefly thou
+ In that clear air took'st life; in Arcady
+ The haunted, land of song; and by the wells
+ Where most the gods frequent. There Chiron old,
+ In the Pelethronian antre, taught thee lore;
+ The plants he taught, and by the shining stars
+ In forests dim to steer. There hast thou seen
+ Immortal Pan dance secret in a glade,
+ And, dancing, roll his eyes; these, where they fell,
+ Shed glee, and through the congregated oaks
+ A flying horror winged; while all the earth
+ To the god's pregnant footing thrilled within.
+ Or whiles, beside the sobbing stream, he breathed,
+ In his clutched pipe unformed and wizard strains
+ Divine yet brutal; which the forest heard,
+ And thou, with awe; and far upon the plain
+ The unthinking ploughman started and gave ear.
+
+ Now things there are that, upon him who sees,
+ A strong vocation lay; and strains there are
+ That whoso hears shall hear for evermore.
+ For evermore thou hear'st immortal Pan
+ And those melodious godheads, ever young
+ And ever quiring, on the mountains old.
+
+ What was this earth, child of the gods, to thee?
+ Forth from thy dreamland thou, a dreamer, cam'st
+ And in thine ears the olden music rang,
+ And in thy mind the doings of the dead,
+ And those heroic ages long forgot.
+ To a so fallen earth, alas! too late,
+ Alas! in evil days, thy steps return,
+ To list at noon for nightingales, to grow
+ A dweller on the beach till Argo come
+ That came long since, a lingerer by the pool
+ Where that desirèd angel bathes no more.
+ As when the Indian to Dakota comes,
+ Or farthest Idaho, and where he dwelt,
+ He with his clan, a humming city finds;
+ Thereon a while, amazed, he stares, and then
+ To right and leftward, like a questing dog,
+ Seeks first the ancestral altars, then the hearth
+ Long cold with rains, and where old terror lodged,
+ And where the dead: so thee undying Hope,
+ With all her pack, hunts screaming through the years:
+ Here, there, thou fleeëst; but nor here nor there
+ The pleasant gods abide, the glory dwells.
+
+ That, that was not Apollo, not the god.
+ This was not Venus, though she Venus seemed
+ A moment. And though fair yon river move,
+ She, all the way, from disenchanted fount
+ To seas unhallowed runs; the gods forsook
+ Long since her trembling rushes; from her plains
+ Disconsolate, long since adventure fled;
+ And now although the inviting river flows,
+ And every poplared cape, and every bend
+ Or willowy islet, win upon thy soul
+ And to thy hopeful shallop whisper speed;
+ Yet hope not thou at all; hope is no more;
+ And O, long since the golden groves are dead
+ The faëry cities vanished from the land!
+
+
+XVI
+
+TO W.E. HENLEY
+
+ The year runs through her phases; rain and sun,
+ Spring-time and summer pass; winter succeeds;
+ But one pale season rules the house of death.
+ Cold falls the imprisoned daylight; fell disease
+ By each lean pallet squats, and pain and sleep
+ Toss gaping on the pillows.
+ But O thou!
+ Uprise and take thy pipe. Bid music flow,
+ Strains by good thoughts attended, like the spring
+ The swallows follow over land and sea.
+ Pain sleeps at once; at once, with open eyes,
+ Dozing despair awakes. The shepherd sees
+ His flock come bleating home; the seaman hears
+ Once more the cordage rattle. Airs of home!
+ Youth, love, and roses blossom; the gaunt ward
+ Dislimns and disappears, and, opening out,
+ Shows brooks and forests, and the blue beyond
+ Of mountains.
+ Small the pipe; but O! do thou,
+ Peak-faced and suffering piper, blow therein
+ The dirge of heroes dead; and to these sick,
+ These dying, sound the triumph over death.
+ Behold! each greatly breathes; each tastes a joy
+ Unknown before, in dying; for each knows
+ A hero dies with him--though unfulfilled,
+ Yet conquering truly--and not dies in vain.
+
+ So is pain cheered, death comforted; the house
+ Of sorrow smiles to listen. Once again--
+ O thou, Orpheus and Heracles, the bard
+ And the deliverer, touch the stops again!
+
+
+XVII
+
+HENRY JAMES
+
+ Who comes to-night? We ope the doors in vain.
+ Who comes? My bursting walls, can you contain
+ The presences that now together throng
+ Your narrow entry, as with flowers and song,
+ As with the air of life, the breath of talk?
+ Lo, how these fair immaculate women walk
+ Behind their jocund maker; and we see
+ Slighted _De Mauves_, and that far different she,
+ _Gressie_, the trivial sphynx; and to our feast
+ _Daisy_ and _Barb_ and _Chancellor_ (she not least!)
+ With all their silken, all their airy kin,
+ Do like unbidden angels enter in.
+ But he, attended by these shining names,
+ Comes (best of all) himself--our welcome James.
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE MIRROR SPEAKS
+
+ Where the bells peal far at sea
+ Cunning fingers fashioned me.
+ There on palace walls I hung
+ While that Consuelo sung;
+ But I heard, though I listened well,
+ Never a note, never a trill,
+ Never a beat of the chiming bell.
+ There I hung and looked, and there
+ In my grey face, faces fair
+ Shone from under shining hair.
+ Well I saw the poising head,
+ But the lips moved and nothing said;
+ And when lights were in the hall,
+ Silent moved the dancers all.
+
+ So a while I glowed, and then
+ Fell on dusty days and men;
+ Long I slumbered packed in straw,
+ Long I none but dealers saw;
+ Till before my silent eye
+ One that sees came passing by.
+ Now with an outlandish grace,
+ To the sparkling fire I face
+ In the blue room at Skerryvore;
+ Where I wait until the door
+ Open, and the Prince of Men,
+ Henry James, shall come again.
+
+
+XIX
+
+KATHARINE
+
+ We see you as we see a face
+ That trembles in a forest place
+ Upon the mirror of a pool
+ For ever quiet, clear, and cool;
+ And, in the wayward glass, appears
+ To hover between smiles and tears,
+ Elfin and human, airy and true,
+ And backed by the reflected blue.
+
+
+XX
+
+TO F. J. S.
+
+ I read, dear friend, in your dear face
+ Your life's tale told with perfect grace;
+ The river of your life I trace
+ Up the sun-chequered, devious bed
+ To the far-distant fountain-head.
+
+ Not one quick beat of your warm heart,
+ Nor thought that came to you apart,
+ Pleasure nor pity, love nor pain
+ Nor sorrow, has gone by in vain;
+ But as some lone, wood-wandering child
+ Brings home with him at evening mild
+ The thorns and flowers of all the wild,
+ From your whole life, O fair and true,
+ Your flowers and thorns you bring with you!
+
+
+XXI
+
+REQUIEM
+
+ Under the wide and starry sky,
+ Dig the grave and let me lie.
+ Glad did I live and gladly die,
+ And I laid me down with a will.
+
+ This be the verse you grave for me:
+ _Here he lies where he longed to be;
+ Home is the sailor, home from sea,
+ And the hunter home from the hill._
+
+ HYÈRES, _May 1884_.
+
+
+XXII
+
+THE CELESTIAL SURGEON
+
+ If I have faltered more or less
+ In my great task of happiness;
+ If I have moved among my race
+ And shown no glorious morning face;
+ If beams from happy human eyes
+ Have moved me not; if morning skies,
+ Books, and my food, and summer rain
+ Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:--
+ Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take
+ And stab my spirit broad awake;
+ Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,
+ Choose Thou, before that spirit die,
+ A piercing pain, a killing sin,
+ And to my dead heart run them in!
+
+
+XXIII
+
+OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS
+
+ Out of the sun, out of the blast,
+ Out of the world, alone I passed
+ Across the moor and through the wood
+ To where the monastery stood.
+ There neither lute nor breathing fife,
+ Nor rumour of the world of life,
+ Nor confidences low and dear,
+ Shall strike the meditative ear.
+ Aloof, unhelpful, and unkind,
+ The prisoners of the iron mind,
+ Where nothing speaks except the bell,
+ The unfraternal brothers dwell.
+
+ Poor passionate men, still clothed afresh
+ With agonising folds of flesh;
+ Whom the clear eyes solicit still
+ To some bold output of the will,
+ While fairy Fancy far before
+ And musing Memory-Hold-the-door
+ Now to heroic death invite
+ And now uncurtain fresh delight:
+ O, little boots it thus to dwell
+ On the remote unneighboured hill!
+
+ O to be up and doing, O
+ Unfearing and unshamed to go
+ In all the uproar and the press
+ About my human business!
+ My undissuaded heart I hear
+ Whisper courage in my ear.
+ With voiceless calls, the ancient earth
+ Summons me to a daily birth.
+ Thou, O my love, ye, O my friends--
+ The gist of life, the end of ends--
+ To laugh, to love, to live, to die,
+ Ye call me by the ear and eye!
+
+ Forth from the casemate, on the plain
+ Where honour has the world to gain,
+ Pour forth and bravely do your part,
+ O knights of the unshielded heart!
+ Forth and for ever forward!--out
+ From prudent turret and redoubt,
+ And in the mellay charge amain,
+ To fall but yet to rise again!
+ Captive? ah, still, to honour bright,
+ A captive soldier of the right!
+ Or free and fighting, good with ill?
+ Unconquering but unconquered still!
+
+ And ye, O brethren, what if God,
+ When from Heav'n's top He spies abroad,
+ And sees on this tormented stage
+ The noble war of mankind rage:
+ What if His vivifying eye,
+ O monks, should pass your corner by?
+ For still the Lord is Lord of might;
+ In deeds, in deeds, He takes delight;
+ The plough, the spear, the laden barks,
+ The field, the founded city, marks;
+ He marks the smiler of the streets,
+ The singer upon garden seats;
+
+ He sees the climber in the rocks:
+ To Him, the shepherd folds his flocks.
+ For those He loves that underprop
+ With daily virtues Heaven's top,
+ And bear the falling sky with ease,
+ Unfrowning caryatides.
+ Those He approves that ply the trade,
+ That rock the child, that wed the maid,
+ That with weak virtues, weaker hands,
+ Sow gladness on the peopled lands.
+ And still with laughter, song and shout,
+ Spin the great wheel of earth about.
+
+ But ye?--O ye who linger still
+ Here in your fortress on the hill,
+ With placid face, with tranquil breath,
+ The unsought volunteers of death,
+ Our cheerful General on high
+ With careless looks may pass you by.
+
+
+XXIV
+
+ Not yet, my soul, these friendly fields desert,
+ Where thou with grass, and rivers, and the breeze,
+ And the bright face of day, thy dalliance hadst;
+ Where to thine ear first sang the enraptured birds;
+ Where love and thou that lasting bargain made.
+ The ship rides trimmed, and from the eternal shore
+ Thou hearest airy voices; but not yet
+ Depart, my soul, not yet a while depart.
+
+ Freedom is far, rest far. Thou art with life
+ Too closely woven, nerve with nerve entwined;
+ Service still craving service, love for love,
+ Love for dear love, still suppliant with tears.
+ Alas, not yet thy human task is done!
+ A bond at birth is forged; a debt doth lie
+ Immortal on mortality. It grows--
+ By vast rebound it grows, unceasing growth;
+ Gift upon gift, alms upon alms, upreared,
+ From man, from God, from nature, till the soul
+ At that so huge indulgence stands amazed.
+
+ Leave not, my soul, the unfoughten field, nor leave
+ Thy debts dishonoured, nor thy place desert
+ Without due service rendered. For thy life,
+ Up, spirit, and defend that fort of clay,
+ Thy body, now beleaguered; whether soon
+ Or late she fall; whether to-day thy friends
+ Bewail thee dead, or, after years, a man
+ Grown old in honour and the friend of peace.
+ Contend, my soul, for moments and for hours;
+ Each is with service pregnant; each reclaimed
+ Is as a kingdom conquered, where to reign.
+
+ As when a captain rallies to the fight
+ His scattered legions, and beats ruin back,
+ He, on the field, encamps, well pleased in mind.
+ Yet surely him shall fortune overtake,
+ Him smite in turn, headlong his ensigns drive;
+ And that dear land, now safe, to-morrow fall.
+ But he, unthinking, in the present good
+ Solely delights, and all the camps rejoice.
+
+
+XXV
+
+ It is not yours, O mother, to complain,
+ Not, mother, yours to weep,
+ Though nevermore your son again
+ Shall to your bosom creep,
+ Though nevermore again you watch your baby sleep.
+
+ Though in the greener paths of earth,
+ Mother and child, no more
+ We wander; and no more the birth
+ Of me whom once you bore
+ Seems still the brave reward that once it seemed of yore;
+
+ Though as all passes, day and night,
+ The seasons and the years,
+ From you, O mother, this delight,
+ This also disappears--
+ Some profit yet survives of all your pangs and tears.
+
+ The child, the seed, the grain of corn,
+ The acorn on the hill,
+ Each for some separate end is born
+ In season fit, and still
+ Each must in strength arise to work the almighty will.
+
+ So from the hearth the children flee,
+ By that almighty hand
+ Austerely led; so one by sea
+ Goes forth, and one by land;
+ Nor aught of all man's sons escapes from that command.
+
+ So from the sally each obeys
+ The unseen almighty nod;
+ So till the ending all their ways
+ Blindfolded loth have trod:
+ Nor knew their task at all, but were the tools of God.
+
+ And as the fervent smith of yore
+ Beat out the glowing blade,
+ Nor wielded in the front of war
+ The weapons that he made,
+ But in the tower at home still plied his ringing trade;
+
+ So like a sword the son shall roam
+ On nobler missions sent;
+ And as the smith remained at home
+ In peaceful turret pent,
+ So sits the while at home the mother well content.
+
+
+XXVI
+
+THE SICK CHILD
+
+ CHILD
+
+ O Mother, lay your hand on my brow!
+ O mother, mother, where am I now?
+ Why is the room so gaunt and great?
+ Why am I lying awake so late?
+
+ MOTHER
+
+ Fear not at all: the night is still.
+ Nothing is here that means you ill--
+ Nothing but lamps the whole town through,
+ And never a child awake but you.
+
+ CHILD
+
+ Mother, mother, speak low in my ear,
+ Some of the things are so great and near,
+ Some are so small and far away,
+ I have a fear that I cannot say.
+ What have I done, and what do I fear,
+ And why are you crying, mother dear?
+
+ MOTHER
+
+ Out in the city, sounds begin,
+ Thank the kind God, the carts come in!
+ An hour or two more, and God is so kind,
+ The day shall be blue in the window-blind,
+ Then shall my child go sweetly asleep,
+ And dream of the birds and the hills of sheep.
+
+
+XXVII
+
+IN MEMORIAM F.A.S.
+
+ Yet, O stricken heart, remember, O remember
+ How of human days he lived the better part.
+ April came to bloom and never dim December
+ Breathed its killing chills upon the head or heart.
+
+ Doomed to know not Winter, only Spring, a being
+ Trod the flowery April blithely for a while,
+ Took his fill of music, joy of thought and seeing,
+ Came and stayed and went, nor ever ceased to smile.
+
+ Came and stayed and went, and now when all is finished,
+ You alone have crossed the melancholy stream,
+ Yours the pang, but his, O his, the undiminished
+ Undecaying gladness, undeparted dream.
+
+ All that life contains of torture, toil, and treason,
+ Shame, dishonour, death, to him were but a name.
+ Here, a boy, he dwelt through all the singing season,
+ And ere the day of sorrow departed as he came.
+
+ DAVOS, 1881.
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+TO MY FATHER
+
+ Peace and her huge invasion to these shores
+ Puts daily home; innumerable sails
+ Dawn on the far horizon and draw near;
+ Innumerable loves, uncounted hopes
+ To our wild coasts, not darkling now, approach:
+ Not now obscure, since thou and thine are there,
+ And bright on the lone isle, the foundered reef,
+ The long, resounding foreland, Pharos stands.
+
+ These are thy works, O father, these thy crown;
+ Whether on high the air be pure, they shine
+ Along the yellowing sunset, and all night
+ Among the unnumbered stars of God they shine;
+ Or whether fogs arise and far and wide
+ The low sea-level drown--each finds a tongue
+ And all night long the tolling bell resounds:
+ So shine, so toll, till night be overpast,
+ Till the stars vanish, till the sun return,
+ And in the haven rides the fleet secure.
+
+ In the first hour, the seaman in his skiff
+ Moves through the unmoving bay, to where the town
+ Its earliest smoke into the air upbreathes,
+ And the rough hazels climb along the beach.
+ To the tugged oar the distant echo speaks.
+ The ship lies resting, where by reef and roost
+ Thou and thy lights have led her like a child.
+
+ This hast thou done, and I--can I be base?
+ I must arise, O father, and to port
+ Some lost, complaining seaman pilot home.
+
+
+XXIX
+
+IN THE STATES
+
+ With half a heart I wander here
+ As from an age gone by
+ A brother--yet though young in years,
+ An elder brother, I.
+
+ You speak another tongue than mine,
+ Though both were English born.
+ I towards the night of time decline
+ You mount into the morn.
+
+ Youth shall grow great and strong and free,
+ But age must still decay:
+ To-morrow for the States,--for me,
+ England and Yesterday.
+
+ SAN FRANCISCO.
+
+
+XXX
+
+A PORTRAIT
+
+ I am a kind of farthing dip,
+ Unfriendly to the nose and eyes;
+ A blue-behinded ape, I skip
+ Upon the trees of Paradise.
+
+ At mankind's feast, I take my place
+ In solemn, sanctimonious state,
+ And have the air of saying grace
+ While I defile the dinner-plate.
+
+ I am "the smiler with the knife,"
+ The battener upon garbage, I--
+ Dear Heaven, with such a rancid life
+ Were it not better far to die?
+
+ Yet still, about the human pale,
+ I love to scamper, love to race,
+ To swing by my irreverent tail
+ All over the most holy place;
+
+ And when at length, some golden day,
+ The unfailing sportsman, aiming at,
+ Shall bag, me--all the world shall say:
+ _Thank God, and there's an end of that!_
+
+
+XXXI
+
+ Sing clearlier, Muse, or evermore be still,
+ Sing truer or no longer sing!
+ No more the voice of melancholy Jaques
+ To wake a weeping echo in the hill;
+ But as the boy, the pirate of the spring,
+ From the green elm a living linnet takes,
+ One natural verse recapture--then be still.
+
+
+XXXII
+
+A CAMP[1]
+
+ The bed was made, the room was fit,
+ By punctual eve the stars were lit;
+ The air was still, the water ran,
+ No need was there for maid or man,
+ When we put up, my ass and I,
+ At God's green caravanserai.
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS[1]
+
+ We travelled in the print of olden wars;
+ Yet all the land was green;
+ And love we found, and peace,
+ Where fire and war had been.
+
+ They pass and smile, the children of the sword--
+ No more the sword they wield;
+ And O, how deep the corn
+ Along the battlefield!
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+ [1] From "Travels with a Donkey."
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+SKERRYVORE
+
+ For love of lovely words, and for the sake
+ Of those, my kinsmen and my countrymen,
+ Who early and late in the windy ocean toiled
+ To plant a star for seamen, where was then
+ The surfy haunt of seals and cormorants:
+ I, on the lintel of this cot, inscribe
+ The name of a strong tower.
+
+
+XXXV
+
+SKERRYVORE
+
+THE PARALLEL
+
+ Here all is sunny, and when the truant gull
+ Skims the green level of the lawn, his wing
+ Dispetals roses; here the house is framed
+ Of kneaded brick and the plumed mountain pine,
+ Such clay as artists fashion and such wood
+ As the tree-climbing urchin breaks. But there
+ Eternal granite hewn from the living isle
+ And dowelled with brute iron, rears a tower
+ That from its wet foundation to its crown
+ Of glittering glass, stands, in the sweep of winds,
+ Immovable, immortal, eminent.
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+ _My house_, I say. But hark to the sunny doves
+ That make my roof the arena of their loves,
+ That gyre about the gable all day long
+ And fill the chimneys with their murmurous song:
+ _Our house_, they say; and _mine_, the cat declares
+ And spreads his golden fleece upon the chairs;
+ And _mine_ the dog, and rises stiff with wrath
+ If any alien foot profane the path.
+ So too the buck that trimmed my terraces,
+ Our whilome gardener, called the garden his;
+ Who now, deposed, surveys my plain abode
+ And his late kingdom, only from the road.
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+ My body which my dungeon is,
+ And yet my parks and palaces:--
+ Which is so great that there I go
+ All the day long to and fro,
+ And when the night begins to fall
+ Throw down my bed and sleep, while all
+ The building hums with wakefulness--
+ Even as a child of savages
+ When evening takes her on her way
+ (She having roamed a summer's day
+ Along the mountain-sides and scalp),
+ Sleeps in an antre of that alp:--
+ Which is so broad and high that there,
+ As in the topless fields of air,
+ My fancy soars like to a kite
+ And faints in the blue infinite:--
+ Which is so strong, my strongest throes
+ And the rough world's besieging blows
+ Not break it, and so weak withal,
+ Death ebbs and flows in its loose wall
+ As the green sea in fishers' nets,
+ And tops its topmost parapets:--
+ Which is so wholly mine that I
+ Can wield its whole artillery,
+ And mine so little, that my soul
+ Dwells in perpetual control,
+ And I but think and speak and do
+ As my dead fathers move me to:--
+ If this born body of my bones
+ The beggared soul so barely owns,
+ What money passed from hand to hand,
+ What creeping custom of the land,
+ What deed of author or assign,
+ Can make a house a thing of mine?
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+ Say not of me that weakly I declined
+ The labours of my sires, and fled the sea,
+ The towers we founded and the lamps we lit,
+ To play at home with paper like a child.
+ But rather say: _In the afternoon of time
+ A strenuous family dusted from its hands
+ The sand of granite, and beholding far
+ Along the sounding coast its pyramids
+ And tall memorials catch the dying sun,
+ Smiled well content, and to this childish task
+ Around the fire addressed its evening hours._
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+IN SCOTS
+
+
+NOTE TO BOOK II
+
+The human conscience has fled of late the troublesome domain of conduct
+for what I should have supposed to be the less congenial field of art:
+there she may now be said to rage, and with special severity in all that
+touches dialect: so that in every novel the letters of the alphabet are
+tortured, and the reader wearied, to commemorate shades of
+mispronunciation. Now, spelling is an art of great difficulty in my
+eyes, and I am inclined to lean upon the printer, even in common
+practice, rather than to venture abroad upon new quests. And the Scots
+tongue has an orthography of its own, lacking neither "authority nor
+author." Yet the temptation is great to lend a little guidance to the
+bewildered Englishman. Some simple phonetic artifice might defend your
+verses from barbarous mishandling, and yet not injure any vested
+interest. So it seems at first; but there are rocks ahead. Thus, if I
+wish the diphthong _ou_ to have its proper value, I may write _oor_
+instead of _our_; many have done so and lived, and the pillars of the
+universe remained unshaken. But if I did so, and came presently to
+_doun_, which is the classical Scots spelling of the English _down_, I
+should begin to feel uneasy; and if I went on a little further, and came
+to a classical Scots word, like _stour_ or _dour_ or _clour_, I should
+know precisely where I was--that is to say, that I was out of sight of
+land on those high seas of spelling reform in which so many strong
+swimmers have toiled vainly. To some the situation is exhilarating; as
+for me, I give one bubbling cry and sink. The compromise at which I have
+arrived is indefensible, and I have no thought of trying to defend it.
+As I have stuck for the most part to the proper spelling, I append a
+table of some common vowel sounds which no one need consult; and just to
+prove that I belong to my age and have in me the stuff of a reformer, I
+have used modification marks throughout. Thus I can tell myself, not
+without pride, that I have added a fresh stumbling-block for English
+readers, and to a page of print in my native tongue have lent a new
+uncouthness. _Sed non nobis._
+
+I note again, that among our new dialecticians, the local habitat of
+every dialect is given to the square mile. I could not emulate this
+nicety if I desired; for I simply wrote my Scots as well as I was able,
+not caring if it hailed from Lauderdale or Angus, from the Mearns or
+Galloway; if I had ever heard a good word, I used it without shame; and
+when Scots was lacking, or the rhyme jibbed, I was glad (like my
+betters) to fall back on English. For all that, I own to a friendly
+feeling for the tongue of Fergusson and of Sir Walter, both Edinburgh
+men; and I confess that Burns has always sounded in my ear like
+something partly foreign. And indeed I am from the Lothians myself; it
+is there I heard the language spoken about my childhood; and it is in
+the drawling Lothian voice that I repeat it to myself. Let the
+precisians call my speech that of the Lothians. And if it be not pure,
+alas! what matters it? The day draws near when this illustrious and
+malleable tongue shall be quite forgotten; and Burns's Ayrshire, and Dr.
+MacDonald's Aberdeen-awa', and Scott's brave, metropolitan utterance
+will be all equally the ghosts of speech. Till then I would love to have
+my hour as a native Maker, and be read by my own countryfolk in our own
+dying language; an ambition surely rather of the heart than of the head,
+so restricted as it is in prospect of endurance, so parochial in bounds
+of space.
+
+
+TABLE OF COMMON SCOTTISH VOWEL SOUNDS
+
+ ae }
+ ai } = open A _as in_ rare.
+
+ a' }
+ au } = AW _as in_ law.
+ aw }
+
+ ea = open E _as in_ mere, but this with exceptions, as heather =
+ heather, wean = wain, lear = lair.
+
+ ee }
+ ei } = open E _as in_ mere.
+ ie }
+
+ oa = open O _as in_ more.
+
+ ou = doubled O _as in_ poor.
+
+ ow = OW _as in_ bower.
+
+ u = doubled O _as in_ poor.
+
+ ui _or_ ü before R = (say roughly) open A _as in_ rare.
+
+ ui _or_ ü before any other consonant = (say roughly) close I _as in_
+ grin.
+
+ y = open I _as in_ kite.
+
+ i = pretty nearly what you please, much as in English, Heaven guide the
+ reader through that labyrinth! But in Scots it dodges usually
+ from the short I, _as in_ grin, to the open E _as in_ mere. Find
+ and blind, I may remark, are pronounced to rhyme with the
+ preterite of grin.
+
+
+I
+
+THE MAKER TO POSTERITY
+
+ Far 'yont amang the years to be,
+ When a' we think, an' a' we see,
+ An' a' we luve, 's been dung ajee
+ By time's rouch shouther,
+ An' what was richt and wrang for me
+ Lies mangled throu'ther,
+
+ It's possible--it's hardly mair--
+ That some ane, ripin' after lear--
+ Some auld professor or young heir,
+ If still there's either--
+ May find an' read me, an' be sair
+ Perplexed, puir brither!
+
+ "_What tongue does your auld bookie speak?_"
+ He'll speir; an' I, his mou' to steik:
+ "_No' bein' fit to write in Greek,
+ I wrote in Lallan,
+ Dear to my heart as the peat-reek,
+ Auld as Tantallon._
+
+ "_Few spak it than, an' noo there's nane.
+ My puir auld sangs lie a' their lane,
+ Their sense, that aince was braw an' plain,
+ Tint a'thegither,
+ Like runes upon a standin' stane
+ Amang the heather._
+
+ "_But think not you the brae to speel;
+ You, tae, maun chow the bitter peel;
+ For a' your lear, for a' your skeel,
+ Ye're nane sae lucky;
+ An' things are mebbe waur than weel
+ For you, my buckie._
+
+ "_The hale concern (baith hens an' eggs,
+ Baith books an' writers, stars an' clegs)
+ Noo stachers upon lowsent legs
+ An' wears awa';
+ The tack o' mankind, near the dregs,
+ Rins unco law._
+
+ "_Your book, that in some braw new tongue
+ Ye wrote or prentit, preached or sung,
+ Will still be just a bairn, an' young
+ In fame an' years,
+ Whan the hale planet's guts are dung
+ About your ears;_
+
+ "_An' you, sair gruppin' to a spar
+ Or whammled wi' some bleezin' star,
+ Cryin' to ken whaur deil ye are,
+ Hame, France, or Flanders--
+ Whang sindry like a railway car
+ An' flie in danders._"
+
+
+II
+
+ILLE TERRARUM
+
+ Frae nirly, nippin', Eas'lan' breeze,
+ Frae Norlan' snaw, an' haar o' seas,
+ Weel happit in your gairden trees,
+ A bonny bit,
+ Atween the muckle Pentland's knees,
+ Secure ye sit.
+
+ Beeches an' aiks entwine their theek,
+ An' firs, a stench, auld-farrant clique.
+ A simmer day, your chimleys reek,
+ Couthy and bien;
+ An' here an' there your windies keek
+ Amang the green.
+
+ A pickle plats an' paths an' posies,
+ A wheen auld gillyflowers an' roses:
+ A ring o' wa's the hale encloses
+ Frae sheep or men:
+ An' there the auld housie beeks an' dozes,
+ A' by her lane.
+
+ The gairdner crooks his weary back
+ A' day in the pitaty-track,
+ Or mebbe stops a while to crack
+ Wi' Jane the cook,
+ Or at some buss, worm-eaten-black,
+ To gie a look.
+
+ Frae the high hills the curlew ca's;
+ The sheep gang baaing by the wa's;
+ Or whiles a clan o' roosty craws
+ Cangle thegither;
+ The wild bees seek the gairden raws,
+ Weariet wi' heather.
+
+ Or in the gloamin' douce an' grey
+ The sweet-throat mavis tunes her lay;
+ The herd comes linkin' doun the brae;
+ An' by degrees
+ The muckle siller müne maks way
+ Amang the trees.
+
+ Here aft hae I, wi' sober heart,
+ For meditation sat apairt,
+ When orra loves or kittle art
+ Perplexed my mind;
+ Here socht a balm for ilka smart
+ O' humankind.
+
+ Here aft, weel neukit by my lane,
+ Wi' Horace, or perhaps Montaigne,
+ The mornin' hours hae come an' gane
+ Abüne my heid--
+ I wadna gi'en a chucky-stane
+ For a' I'd read.
+
+ But noo the auld city, street by street,
+ An' winter fu' o' snaw an' sleet,
+ A while shut in my gangrel feet
+ An' goavin' mettle;
+ Noo is the soopit ingle sweet,
+ An' liltin' kettle.
+
+ An' noo the winter winds complain;
+ Cauld lies the glaur in ilka lane;
+ On draigled hizzie, tautit wean
+ An' drucken lads,
+ In the mirk nicht, the winter rain
+ Dribbles an' blads.
+
+ Whan bugles frae the Castle rock,
+ An' beaten drums wi' dowie shock,
+ Wauken, at cauld-rife sax o'clock,
+ My chitterin' frame,
+ I mind me on the kintry cock,
+ The kintry hame.
+
+ I mind me on yon bonny bield;
+ An' Fancy traivels far afield
+ To gaither a' that gairdens yield
+ O' sun an' Simmer:
+ To hearten up a dowie chield,
+ Fancy's the limmer!
+
+
+III
+
+ When aince Aprile has fairly come,
+ An' birds may bigg in winter's lum,
+ An' pleesure's spreid for a' and some
+ O' whatna state,
+ Love, wi' her auld recruitin' drum,
+ Than taks the gate.
+
+ The heart plays dunt wi' main an' micht;
+ The lasses' een are a' sae bricht,
+ Their dresses are sae braw an' ticht,
+ The bonny birdies!--
+ Puir winter virtue at the sicht
+ Gangs heels ower hurdies.
+
+ An' aye as love frae land to land
+ Tirls the drum wi' eident hand,
+ A' men collect at her command,
+ Toun-bred or land'art,
+ An' follow in a denty band
+ Her gaucy standart.
+
+ An' I, wha sang o' rain an' snaw,
+ An' weary winter weel awa',
+ Noo busk me in a jacket braw,
+ An' tak my place
+ I' the ram-stam, harum-scarum raw,
+ Wi' smilin' face.
+
+
+IV
+
+A MILE AN' A BITTOCK
+
+ A mile an' a bittock, a mile or twa,
+ Abüne the burn, ayont the law,
+ Davie an' Donal' an' Cherlie an' a',
+ An' the müne was shinin' clearly!
+
+ Ane went hame wi' the ither, an' then
+ The ither went hame wi' the ither twa men,
+ An' baith wad return him the service again,
+ An' the müne was shinin' clearly!
+
+ The clocks were chappin' in house an' ha',
+ Eleeven, twal an' ane an' twa;
+ An' the guidman's face was turnt to the wa'
+ An' the müne was shinin' clearly!
+
+ A wind got up frae affa the sea,
+ It blew the stars as clear's could be,
+ It blew in the een of a' o' the three,
+ An' the müne was shinin' clearly!
+
+ Noo, Davie was first to get sleep in his head,
+ "The best o' frien's maun twine," he said;
+ "I'm weariet, an' here I'm awa' to my bed."
+ An' the müne was shinin' clearly!
+
+ Twa o' them walkin' an' crackin' their lane,
+ The mornin' licht cam grey an' plain,
+ An' the birds they yammert on stick an' stane,
+ An' the müne was shinin' clearly!
+
+ O years ayont, O years awa',
+ My lads, ye'll mind whate'er befa'--
+ My lads, ye'll mind on the bield o' the law,
+ When the müne was shinin' clearly.
+
+
+V
+
+A LOWDEN SABBATH MORN
+
+ The clinkum-clank o' Sabbath bells
+ Noo to the hoastin' rookery swells,
+ Noo faintin' laigh in shady dells,
+ Sounds far an' near,
+ An' through the simmer kintry tells
+ Its tale o' cheer.
+
+ An' noo, to that melodious play,
+ A' deidly awn the quiet sway--
+ A' ken their solemn holiday,
+ Bestial an' human,
+ The singin' lintie on the brae,
+ The restin' plou'man.
+
+ He, mair than a' the lave o' men,
+ His week completit joys to ken;
+ Half-dressed, he daunders out an' in,
+ Perplext wi' leisure;
+ An' his raxt limbs he'll rax again
+ Wi' painfü' pleesure.
+
+ The steerin' mither strang afit
+ Noo shoos the bairnies but a bit;
+ Noo cries them ben, their Sinday shüit
+ To scart upon them,
+ Or sweeties in their pooch to pit,
+ Wi' blessin's on them.
+
+ The lasses, clean frae tap to taes,
+ Are busked in crunklin' underclaes;
+ The gartened hose, the weel-fllled stays,
+ The nakit shift,
+ A' bleached on bonny greens for days,
+ An' white's the drift.
+
+ An' noo to face the kirkward mile:
+ The guidman's hat o' dacent style,
+ The blackit shoon we noo maun fyle
+ As white's the miller:
+ A waefü' peety tae, to spile
+ The warth o' siller.
+
+ Our Marg'et, aye sae keen to crack,
+ Douce-stappin' in the stoury track,
+ Her emeralt goun a' kiltit back
+ Frae snawy coats,
+ White-ankled, leads the kirkward pack
+ Wi' Dauvit Groats.
+
+ A thocht ahint, in runkled breeks,
+ A' spiled wi' lyin' by for weeks,
+ The guidman follows closs, an' cleiks
+ The sonsie missis;
+ His sarious face at aince bespeaks
+ The day that this is.
+
+ And aye an' while we nearer draw
+ To whaur the kirkton lies alaw,
+ Mair neebours, comin' saft an' slaw
+ Frae here an' there,
+ The thicker thrang the gate an' caw
+ The stour in air.
+
+ But hark! the bells frae nearer clang;
+ To rowst the slaw their sides they bang;
+ An' see! black coats a'ready thrang
+ The green kirkyaird;
+ And at the yett, the chestnuts spang
+ That brocht the laird.
+
+ The solemn elders at the plate
+ Stand drinkin' deep the pride o' state:
+ The practised hands as gash an' great
+ As Lords o' Session;
+ The later named, a wee thing blate
+ In their expression.
+
+ The prentit stanes that mark the deid,
+ Wi' lengthened lip, the sarious read;
+ Syne wag a moraleesin' heid,
+ An' then an' there
+ Their hirplin' practice an' their creed
+ Try hard to square.
+
+ It's here our Merren lang has lain,
+ A wee bewast the table-stane;
+ An' yon's the grave o' Sandy Blane;
+ An' further ower,
+ The mither's brithers, dacent men!
+ Lie a' the fower.
+
+ Here the guidman sall bide awee
+ To dwall amang the deid; to see
+ Auld faces clear in fancy's e'e;
+ Belike to hear
+ Auld voices fa'in' saft an' slee
+ On fancy's ear.
+
+ Thus, on the day o' solemn things,
+ The bell that in the steeple swings
+ To fauld a scaittered faim'ly rings
+ Its walcome screed;
+ An' just a wee thing nearer brings
+ The quick an' deid.
+
+ But noo the bell is ringin' in;
+ To tak their places, folk begin;
+ The minister himsel' will shüne
+ Be up the gate,
+ Filled fu' wi' clavers about sin
+ An' man's estate.
+
+ The tünes are up--_French_, to be shüre,
+ The faithfü' _French_, an' twa-three mair;
+ The auld prezentor, hoastin' sair,
+ Wales out the portions,
+ An' yirks the tüne into the air
+ Wi' queer contortions.
+
+ Follows the prayer, the readin' next,
+ An' than the fisslin' for the text--
+ The twa-three last to find it, vext
+ But kind o' proud;
+ An' than the peppermints are raxed,
+ An' southernwood.
+
+ For noo's the time whan pows are seen
+ Nid-noddin' like a mandareen;
+ When tenty mithers stap a preen
+ In sleepin' weans;
+ An' nearly half the parochine
+ Forget their pains.
+
+ There's just a waukrif twa or three:
+ Thrawn commentautors sweer to 'gree,
+ Weans glowrin' at the bumlin' bee
+ On windie-glasses,
+ Or lads that tak a keek a-glee
+ At sonsie lasses.
+
+ Himsel', meanwhile, frae whaur he cocks
+ An' bobs belaw the soundin'-box,
+ The treasures of his words unlocks
+ Wi' prodigality,
+ An' deals some unco dingin' knocks
+ To infidality.
+
+ Wi' sappy unction, hoo he burkes
+ The hopes o' men that trust in works,
+ Expounds the fau'ts o' ither kirks,
+ An' shaws the best o' them
+ No' muckle better than mere Turks,
+ When a's confessed o' them.
+
+ Bethankit! what a bonny creed!
+ What mair would ony Christian need?--
+ The braw words rummle ower his heid,
+ Nor steer the sleeper;
+ An' in their restin' graves, the deid
+ Sleep aye the deeper.
+
+
+ NOTE.--It may be guessed by some that I had a certain parish in my
+eye, and this makes it proper I should add a word of disclamation. In my
+time there have been two ministers in that parish. Of the first I have a
+special reason to speak well, even had there been any to think ill. The
+second I have often met in private and long (in the due phrase) "sat
+under" in his church, and neither here nor there have I heard an unkind
+or ugly word upon his lips. The preacher of the text had thus no
+original in that particular parish; but when I was a boy, he might have
+been observed in many others; he was then (like the schoolmaster)
+abroad; and by recent advices, it would seem he has not yet entirely
+disappeared.--[R. L. S.]
+
+
+VI
+
+THE SPAEWIFE
+
+ O, I wad like to ken--to the beggar-wife says I--
+ Why chops are guid to brander and nane sae guid to fry.
+ An' siller, that's sae braw to keep, is brawer still to gi'e.
+ --_It's gey an' easy speirin'_, says the beggar-wife to me.
+
+ O, I wad like to ken--to the beggar-wife says I--
+ Hoo a' things come to be whaur we find them when we try.
+ The lassies in their claes an' the fishes in the sea.
+ --_It's gey an' easy speirin'_, says the beggar-wife to me.
+
+ O' I wad like to ken--to the beggar-wife says I--
+ Why lads are a' to sell an' lasses a' to buy;
+ An' naebody for dacency but barely twa or three.
+ --_It's gey an' easy speirin'_, says the beggar-wife to me.
+
+ O, I wad like to ken--to the beggar-wife says I--
+ Gin death's as shüre to men as killin' is to kye,
+ Why God has filled the yearth sae fu' o' tasty things to pree.
+ --_It's gey an' easy speirin'_, says the beggar-wife to me.
+
+ O, I wad like to ken--to the beggar-wife says I--
+ The reason o' the cause an' the wherefore o' the why,
+ Wi' mony anither riddle brings the tear into my e'e.
+ --_It's gey an' easy speirin'_, says the beggar-wife to me.
+
+
+VII
+
+THE BLAST--1875
+
+ It's rainin'. Weet's the gairden sod,
+ Weet the lang roads whaur gangrels plod--
+ A maist unceevil thing o' God
+ In mid July--
+ If ye'll just curse the sneckdraw, dod!
+ An' sae wull I!
+
+ He's a braw place in Heev'n, ye ken,
+ An' lea's us puir, forjaskit men
+ Clamjamfried in the but and ben
+ He ca's the earth--
+ A wee bit inconvenient den
+ No muckle worth;
+
+ An' whiles, at orra times, keeks out,
+ Sees what puir mankind are about;
+ An' if He can, I've little doubt,
+ Upsets their plans;
+ He hates a' mankind, brainch and root,
+ An' a' that's man's.
+
+ An' whiles, whan they tak' heart again,
+ An' life i' the sun looks braw an' plain,
+ Doun comes a jaw o' droukin' rain
+ Upon their honours--
+ God sends a spate out ower the plain,
+ Or mebbe thun'ers.
+
+ Lord safe us, life's an unco thing!
+ Simmer and Winter, Yule an' Spring,
+ The damned, dour-heartit seasons bring
+ A feck o' trouble.
+ I wadna try 't to be a king--
+ No, nor for double.
+
+ But since we're in it, willy-nilly,
+ We maun be watchfü', wise an' skilly,
+ An' no' mind ony ither billy,
+ Lassie nor God.
+ But drink--that's my best counsel till 'e;
+ Sae tak' the nod.
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE COUNTERBLAST--1886
+
+ My bonny man, the warld, it's true,
+ Was made for neither me nor you;
+ It's just a place to warstle through,
+ As Job confessed o't;
+ And aye the best that we'll can do
+ Is mak' the best o't.
+
+ There's rowth o' wrang, I'm free to say:
+ The simmer brunt, the winter blae,
+ The face of earth a' fyled wi' clay
+ An' dour wi' chuckies,
+ An' life a rough an' land'art play
+ For country buckies.
+
+ An' food's anither name for clart;
+ An' beasts an' brambles bite an' scart;
+ An' what would WE be like, my heart!
+ If bared o' claethin'?
+ --Aweel, I canna mend your cart:
+ It's that or naethin'.
+
+ A feck o' folk frae first to last
+ Have through this queer experience passed;
+ Twa-three, I ken, just damn an' blast
+ The hale transaction;
+ But twa-three ithers, east an' wast,
+ Fand satisfaction.
+
+ Whaur braid the briery muirs expand,
+ A waefü' an' a weary land,
+ The bumble-bees, a gowden band,
+ Are blithely hingin';
+ An' there the canty wanderer fand
+ The laverock singin'.
+
+ Trout in the burn grow great as herr'n';
+ The simple sheep can find their fair'n';
+ The winds blaws clean about the cairn
+ Wi' caller air;
+ The muircock an' the barefit bairn
+ Are happy there.
+
+ Sic-like the howes o' life to some:
+ Green loans whaur they ne'er fash their thumb,
+ But mark the muckle winds that come,
+ Soopin' an' cool,
+ Or hear the powrin' burnie drum
+ In the shilfa's pool.
+
+ The evil wi' the guid they tak';
+ They ca' a grey thing grey, no' black;
+ To a steigh brae a stubborn back
+ Addressin' daily;
+ An' up the rude, unbieldy track
+ O' life, gang gaily.
+
+ What you would like's a palace ha',
+ Or Sinday parlour dink an' braw
+ Wi' a' things ordered in a raw
+ By denty leddies.
+ Weel, then, ye canna hae't: that's a'
+ That to be said is.
+
+ An' since at life ye've ta'en the grue,
+ An' winna blithely hirsle through,
+ Ye've fund the very thing to do--
+ That's to drink speerit;
+ An' shüne we'll hear the last o' you--
+ An' blithe to hear it!
+
+ The shoon ye coft, the life ye lead,
+ Ithers will heir when aince ye're deid;
+ They'll heir your tasteless bite o' breid,
+ An' find it sappy;
+ They'll to your dulefü' house succeed,
+ An' there be happy.
+
+ As whan a glum an' fractious wean
+ Has sat an' sullened by his lane
+ Till, wi' a rowstin' skelp, he's ta'en
+ An' shoo'd to bed----
+ The ither bairns a' fa' to play'n',
+ As gleg's a gled.
+
+
+IX
+
+THE COUNTERBLAST IRONICAL
+
+ It's strange that God should fash to frame
+ The yearth and lift sae hie,
+ An' clean forget to explain the same
+ To a gentleman like me.
+
+ Thae gusty, donnered ither folk,
+ Their weird they weel may dree;
+ But why present a pig in a poke
+ To a gentleman like me?
+
+ Thae ither folk their parritch eat
+ An' sup their sugared tea;
+ But the mind is no' to be wyled wi' meat
+ Wi' a gentleman like me.
+
+ Thae ither folk, they court their joes
+ At gloamin' on the lea;
+ But they're made of a commoner clay, I suppose,
+ Than a gentleman like me.
+
+ Thae ither folk, for richt or wrang,
+ They suffer, bleed, or dee;
+ But a' thir things are an emp'y sang
+ To a gentleman like me.
+
+ It's a different thing that I demand,
+ Tho' humble as can be--
+ A statement fair in my Maker's hand
+ To a gentleman like me:
+
+ A clear account writ fair an' broad,
+ An' a plain apologie;
+ Or the deevil a ceevil word to God
+ From a gentleman like me.
+
+
+X
+
+THEIR LAUREATE TO AN ACADEMY CLASS DINNER CLUB
+
+ Dear Thamson class, whaure'er I gang
+ It aye comes ower me wi' a spang:
+ "_Lordsake! thae Thamson lads--(deil hang
+ Or else Lord mend them!)--
+ An' that wanchancy annual sang
+ I ne'er can send them!_"
+
+ Straucht, at the name, a trusty tyke,
+ My conscience girrs ahint the dyke;
+ Straucht on my hinderlands I fyke
+ To find a rhyme t' ye;
+ Pleased--although mebbe no' pleased-like--
+ To gie my time t' ye.
+
+ "_Weel_," an' says you, wi' heavin' breist,
+ "_Sae far, sae guid, but what's the neist?
+ Yearly we gather to the feast,
+ A' hopefü' men--
+ Yearly we skelloch 'Hang the beast--
+ Nae sang again!'_"
+
+ My lads, an' what am I to say?
+ Ye shürely ken the Muse's way:
+ Yestreen, as gleg's a tyke--the day,
+ Thrawn like a cuddy:
+ Her conduc', that to her's a play,
+ Deith to a body.
+
+ Aft whan I sat an' made my mane,
+ Aft whan I laboured burd-alane
+ Fishin' for rhymes an' findin' nane,
+ Or nane were fit for ye--
+ Ye judged me cauld's a chucky-stane--
+ No car'n' a bit for ye!
+
+ But saw ye ne'er some pingein' bairn
+ As weak as a pitaty-par'n'--
+ Less üsed wi' guidin' horse-shoe aim
+ Than steerin' crowdie--
+ Packed aff his lane, by moss an' cairn,
+ To ca' the howdie.
+
+ Wae's me, for the puir callant than!
+ He wambles like a poke o' bran,
+ An' the lowse rein, as hard's he can,
+ Pu's, trem'lin' handit;
+ Till, blaff! upon his hinderlan'
+ Behauld him landit.
+
+ Sic-like--I awn the weary fac'--
+ Whan on my muse the gate I tak',
+ An' see her gleed e'e raxin' back
+ To keek ahint her;--
+ To me, the brig o' Heev'n gangs black
+ As blackest winter.
+
+ "_Lordsake! we're aff_," thinks I, "_but whaur?
+ On what abhorred an' whinny scaur,
+ Or whammled in what sea o' glaur,
+ Will she desert me?
+ An' will she just disgrace? or waur--
+ Will she no' hurt me?_"
+
+ Kittle the quære! But at least
+ The day I've backed the fashious beast,
+ While she, wi' mony a spang an' reist,
+ Flang heels ower bonnet;
+ An' a' triumphant--for your feast,
+ Hae! there's your sonnet!
+
+
+XI
+
+EMBRO HIE KIRK
+
+ The Lord Himsel' in former days
+ Waled out the proper tunes for praise
+ An' named the proper kind o' claes
+ For folk to preach in:
+ Preceese and in the chief o' ways
+ Important teachin'.
+
+ He ordered a' things late and air';
+ He ordered folk to stand at prayer
+ (Although I canna just mind where
+ He gave the warnin'),
+ An' pit pomatum on their hair
+ On Sabbath mornin'.
+
+ The hale o' life by His commands
+ Was ordered to a body's hands;
+ But see! this _corpus juris_ stands
+ By a' forgotten;
+ An' God's religion in a' lands
+ Is deid an' rotten.
+
+ While thus the lave o' mankind's lost,
+ O' Scotland still God maks His boast--
+ Puir Scotland, on whase barren coast
+ A score or twa
+ Auld wives wi' mutches an' a hoast
+ Still keep His law.
+
+ In Scotland, a wheen canty, plain,
+ Douce, kintry-leevin' folk retain
+ The Truth--or did so aince--alane
+ Of a' men leevin';
+ An' noo just twa o' them remain--
+ Just Begg an' Niven.
+
+ For noo, unfaithfü' to the Lord,
+ Auld Scotland joins the rebel horde;
+ Her human hymn-books on the board
+ She noo displays:
+ An' Embro Hie Kirk's been restored
+ In popish ways.
+
+ O _punctum temporis_ for action
+ To a' o' the reformin' faction,
+ If yet, by ony act or paction,
+ Thocht, word, or sermon,
+ This dark an' damnable transaction
+ Micht yet determine!
+
+ For see--as Doctor Begg explains--
+ Hoo easy 't's düne! a pickle weans,
+ Wha in the Hie Street gaither stanes
+ By his instruction,
+ The uncovenantit, pentit panes
+ Ding to destruction.
+
+ Up, Niven, or ower late--an' dash
+ Laigh in the glaur that carnal hash;
+ Let spires and pews wi' gran' stramash
+ Thegither fa';
+ The rumlin' kist o' whustles smash
+ In pieces sma'.
+
+ Noo choose ye out a walie hammer;
+ About the knottit buttress clam'er;
+ Alang the steep roof stoyt an' stammer,
+ A gate mischancy;
+ On the aul' spire, the bells' hie cha'mer,
+ Dance your bit dancie.
+
+ Ding, devel, dunt, destroy, an' ruin,
+ Wi' carnal stanes the square bestrewn',
+ Till your loud chaps frae Kyle to Fruin,
+ Frae Hell to Heeven,
+ Tell the guid wark that baith are doin'--
+ Baith Begg an' Niven.
+
+
+XII
+
+THE SCOTSMAN'S RETURN FROM ABROAD
+
+IN A LETTER FROM MR. THOMSON TO MR. JOHNSTONE
+
+ In mony a foreign pairt I've been,
+ An' mony an unco ferlie seen,
+ Since, Mr. Johnstone, you and I,
+ Last walkit upon Cocklerye.
+ Wi' gleg, observant een, I pass't
+ By sea an' land, through East an' Wast,
+ And still in ilka age an' station
+ Saw naething but abomination.
+ In thir uncovenantit lands
+ The gangrel Scot uplifts his hands
+ At lack of a' sectarian füsh'n,
+ An' cauld religious destitütion.
+ He rins, puir man, frae place to place,
+ Tries a' their graceless means o' grace,
+ Preacher on preacher, kirk on kirk--
+ This yin a stot an' thon a stirk--
+ A bletherin' clan, no warth a preen.
+ As bad as Smith of Aiberdeen!
+
+ At last, across the weary faem,
+ Frae far, outlandish pairts I came.
+ On ilka side o' me I fand
+ Fresh tokens o' my native land.
+ Wi' whatna joy I hailed them a'--
+ The hill-taps standin' raw by raw,
+ The public-house, the Hielan' birks,
+ And a' the bonny U.P. kirks!
+ But maistly thee, the bluid o' Scots,
+ Frae Maidenkirk to John o' Groats!
+ The king o' drinks, as I conceive it,
+ Talisker, Isla, or Glenlivet!
+
+ For after years wi' a pockmantie
+ Frae Zanzibar to Alicante,
+ In mony a fash and sair affliction
+ I gie't as my sincere conviction--
+ Of a' their foreign tricks an' pliskies,
+ I maist abominate their whiskies.
+ Nae doot, themsel's, they ken it weel,
+ An' wi' a hash o' leemon peel,
+ And ice an' siccan filth, they ettle
+ The stawsome kind o' goo to settle
+ Sic wersh apothecary's broos wi'
+ As Scotsmen scorn to fyle their moo's wi'.
+
+ An', man, I was a blithe hame-comer
+ Whan first I syndit out my rummer.
+ Ye should hae seen me then, wi' care
+ The less important pairts prepare;
+ Syne, weel contentit wi' it a',
+ Pour in the speerits wi' a jaw!
+ I didna drink, I didna speak,--
+ I only snowkit up the reek.
+ I was sae pleased therein to paidle,
+ I sat an' plowtered wi' my ladle.
+
+ An' blithe was I, the morrow's morn,
+ To daunder through the stookit corn,
+ And after a' my strange mishanters
+ Sit doun amang my ain dissenters
+ An', man, it was a joy to me
+ The pu'pit an' the pews to see,
+ The pennies dirlin' in the plate,
+ The elders lookin' on in state;
+ An' 'mang the first, as it befell,
+ Wha should I see, sir, but yoursel'!
+
+ I was, and I will no' deny it,
+ At the first gliff a hantle tryit
+ To see yoursel' in sic a station--
+ It seemed a doubtfü' dispensation.
+ The feelin' was a mere digression;
+ For shüne I understood the session,
+ An' mindin' Aiken an' M'Neil,
+ I wondered they had düne sae weel.
+ I saw I had mysel' to blame;
+ For had I but remained at hame,
+ Aiblins--though no ava' deservin' 't--
+ They micht hae named your humble servant.
+
+ The kirk was filled, the door was steiked;
+ Up to the pu'pit aince I keeked;
+ I was mair pleased than I can tell--
+ It was the minister himsel'!
+ Proud, proud was I to see his face,
+ After sae lang awa' frae grace.
+ Pleased as I was, I'm no' denyin'
+ Some maitters were not edifyin';
+ For first I fand--an' here was news!--
+ Mere hymn-books cockin' in the pews--
+ A humanised abomination,
+ Unfit for ony congregation.
+ Syne, while I still was on the tenter,
+ I scunnered at the new prezentor;
+ I thocht him gesterin' an' cauld--
+ A sair declension frae the auld.
+ Syne, as though a' the faith was wreckit,
+ The prayer was not what I'd exspeckit.
+ Himsel', as it appeared to me,
+ Was no' the man he üsed to be.
+ But just as I was growin' vext
+ He waled a maist judeecious text,
+ An', launchin' into his prelections,
+ Swoopt, wi' a skirl, on a' defections.
+
+ O what a gale was on my speerit
+ To hear the p'ints o' doctrine clearit,
+ And a' the horrors o' damnation
+ Set furth wi' faithfü' ministration!
+ Nae shauchlin' testimony here--
+ We were a' damned, an' that was clear.
+ I owned, wi' gratitude an' wonder,
+ He was a pleesure to sit under.
+
+
+XIII
+
+ Late in the nicht in bed I lay,
+ The winds were at their weary play,
+ An' tirlin' wa's an' skirlin' wae
+ Through Heev'n they battered;--
+ On-ding o' hail, on-blaff o' spray,
+ The tempest blattered.
+
+ The masoned house it dinled through;
+ It dung the ship, it cowped the coo;
+ The rankit aiks it overthrew,
+ Had braved a' weathers;
+ The strang sea-gleds it took an' blew
+ Awa' like feethers.
+
+ The thrawes o' fear on a' were shed,
+ An' the hair rose, an' slumber fled,
+ An' lichts were lit an' prayers were said
+ Through a' the kintry;
+ An' the cauld terror clum in bed
+ Wi' a' an' sindry.
+
+ To hear in the pit-mirk on hie
+ The brangled collieshangie flie,
+ The warl', they thocht, wi' land an' sea,
+ Itsel' wad cowpit;
+ An' for auld airn, the smashed débris
+ By God be rowpit.
+
+ Meanwhile frae far Aldeboran
+ To folks wi' talescopes in han',
+ O' ships that cowpit, winds that ran,
+ Nae sign was seen,
+ But the wee warl' in sunshine span
+ As bricht's a preen.
+
+ I, tae, by God's especial grace,
+ Dwall denty in a bieldy place,
+ Wi' hosened feet, wi' shaven face,
+ Wi' dacent mainners:
+ A grand example to the race
+ O' tautit sinners!
+
+ The wind may blaw, the heathen rage,
+ The deil may start on the rampage;--
+ The sick in bed, the thief in cage--
+ What's a' to me?
+ Cosh in my house, a sober sage,
+ I sit an' see.
+
+ An' whiles the bluid spangs to my bree,
+ To lie sae saft, to live sae free,
+ While better men maun do an' die
+ In unco places.
+ "_Whaur's God?_" I cry, an' "_Whae is me
+ To hae sic graces?_"
+
+ I mind the fecht the sailors keep,
+ But fire or can'le, rest or sleep,
+ In darkness an' the muckle deep;
+ An' mind beside
+ The herd that on the hills o' sheep
+ Has wandered wide.
+
+ I mind me on the hoastin' weans--
+ The penny joes on causey-stanes--
+ The auld folk wi' the crazy banes,
+ Baith auld an' puir,
+ That aye maun thole the winds an' rains
+ An' labour sair.
+
+ An' whiles I'm kind o' pleased a blink,
+ An' kind o' fleyed forby, to think,
+ For a' my rowth o' meat an' drink
+ An' waste o' crumb,
+ I'll mebbe have to thole wi' skink
+ In Kingdom Come.
+
+ For God whan jowes the Judgment bell
+ Wi' His ain Hand, His Leevin' Sel',
+ Sall ryve the guid (as Prophets tell)
+ Frae them that had it;
+ And in the reamin' pat o' Hell,
+ The rich be scaddit.
+
+ O Lord, if this indeed be sae,
+ Let daw' that sair an' happy day!
+ Again the warl', grawn auld an' grey,
+ Up wi' your aixe!
+ An' let the puir enjoy their play--
+ I'll thole my paiks.
+
+
+XIV
+
+MY CONSCIENCE!
+
+ Of a' the ills that flesh can fear,
+ The loss o' frien's, the lack o' gear,
+ A yowlin' tyke, a glandered mear,
+ A lassie's nonsense--
+ There's just ae thing I canna bear,
+ An' that's my conscience.
+
+ Whan day (an' a' excüse) has gane,
+ An' wark is düne, and duty's plain,
+ An' to my chalmer a' my lane
+ I creep apairt,
+ My conscience! hoo the yammerin' pain
+ Stends to my heart!
+
+ A' day wi' various ends in view,
+ The hairsts o' time I had to pu',
+ An' made a hash wad staw a soo,
+ Let be a man!--
+ My conscience! whan my han's were fu',
+ Whaur were ye than?
+
+ An' there were a' the lures o' life,
+ There pleesure skirlin' on the fife,
+ There anger, wi' the hotchin' knife
+ Ground shairp in Hell--
+ My conscience!--you that's like a wife!--
+ Whaur was yoursel'?
+
+ I ken it fine: just waitin' here,
+ To gar the evil waur appear,
+ To clart the guid, confüse the clear,
+ Misca' the great,
+ My conscience! an' to raise a steer
+ Whan a's ower late.
+
+ Sic-like, some tyke grawn auld and blind,
+ Whan thieves brok' through the gear to p'ind,
+ Has lain his dozened length an' grinned
+ At the disaster;
+ An' the morn's mornin', wud's the wind,
+ Yokes on his master.
+
+
+XV
+
+TO DOCTOR JOHN BROWN
+
+ _Whan the dear doctor, dear to a',
+ Was still among us here belaw,
+ I set my pipes his praise to blaw
+ Wi' a' my speerit;
+ But noo, dear doctor! he's awa'
+ An' ne'er can hear it._
+
+ By Lyne and Tyne, by Thames and Tees,
+ By a' the various river Dee's,
+ In Mars and Manors 'yont the seas
+ Or here at hame,
+ Whaure'er there's kindly folk to please,
+ They ken your name.
+
+ They ken your name, they ken your tyke,
+ They ken the honey from your byke;
+ But mebbe after a' your fyke,
+ (The trüth to tell)
+ It's just your honest Rab they like,
+ An' no' yoursel'.
+
+ As at the gowff, some canny play'r
+ Should tee a common ba' wi' care--
+ Should flourish and deleever fair
+ His souple shintie--
+ An' the ba' rise into the air,
+ A leevin' lintie:
+
+ Sae in the game we writers play,
+ There comes to some a bonny day,
+ When a dear ferlie shall repay
+ Their years o' strife,
+ An' like your Rab, their things o' clay
+ Spreid wings o' life.
+
+ Ye scarce deserved it, I'm afraid--
+ You that had never learned the trade,
+ But just some idle mornin' strayed
+ Into the schüle,
+ An' picked the fiddle up an' played
+ Like Neil himsel'.
+
+ Your e'e was gleg, your fingers dink;
+ Ye didna fash yoursel' to think,
+ But wove, as fast as puss can link,
+ Your denty wab:--
+ Ye stapped your pen into the ink,
+ An' there was Rab!
+
+ Sinsyne, whaure'er your fortune lay
+ By dowie den, by canty brae,
+ Simmer an' winter, nicht an' day,
+ Rab was aye wi' ye;
+ An' a' the folk on a' the way
+ Were blithe to see ye.
+
+ O sir, the gods are kind indeed,
+ An' hauld ye for an honoured heid,
+ That for a wee bit clarkit screed
+ Sae weel reward ye,
+ An' lend--puir Rabbie bein' deid--
+ His ghaist to guard ye.
+
+ For though, whaure'er yoursel' may be,
+ We've just to turn an' glisk a wee,
+ An' Rab at heel we're shüre to see
+ Wi' gladsome caper:--
+ The bogle of a bogle, he--
+ A ghaist o' paper!
+
+ And as the auld-farrant hero sees
+ In Hell a bogle Hercules,
+ Pit there the lesser deid to please,
+ While he himsel'
+ Dwalls wi' the muckle gods at ease
+ Far raised frae Hell:
+
+ Sae the true Rabbie far has gane
+ On kindlier business o' his ain
+ Wi' aulder frien's; an' his breist-bane
+ An' stumpie tailie,
+ He birstles at a new hearth-stane
+ By James and Ailie.
+
+
+XVI
+
+ It's an owercome sooth for age an' youth,
+ And it brooks wi' nae denial,
+ That the dearest friends are the auldest friends,
+ And the young are just on trial.
+
+ There's a rival bauld wi' young an' auld,
+ And it's him that has bereft me;
+ For the sürest friends are the auldest friends,
+ And the maist o' mine's hae left me.
+
+ There are kind hearts still, for friends to fill
+ And fools to take and break them;
+ But the nearest friends are the auldest friends,
+ And the grave's the place to seek them.
+
+
+
+
+BALLADS
+
+
+THE SONG OF RAHÉRO
+
+A LEGEND OF TAHITI
+
+ _TO
+ ORI A ORI_
+
+ _Ori, my brother in the island mode,
+ In every tongue and meaning much my friend,
+ This story of your country and your clan,
+ In your loved house, your too much honoured guest,
+ I made in English. Take it, being done;
+ And let me sign it with the name you gave._
+
+ _TERIITERA._
+
+
+
+
+BALLADS
+
+THE SONG OF RAHÉRO
+
+
+I
+
+THE SLAYING OF TÁMATÉA
+
+ It fell in the days of old, as the men of Taiárapu tell,
+ A youth went forth to the fishing, and fortune favoured him well.
+ Támatéa his name: gullible, simple, and kind.
+ Comely of countenance, nimble of body, empty of mind,
+ His mother ruled him and loved him beyond the wont of a wife,
+ Serving the lad for eyes and living herself in his life.
+ Alone from the sea and the fishing came Támatéa the fair,
+ Urging his boat to the beach, and the mother awaited him there.
+ --"Long may you live!" said she. "Your fishing has sped to a wish.
+ And now let us choose for the king the fairest of all your fish.
+ For fear inhabits the palace and grudging grows in the land,
+ Marked is the sluggardly foot and marked the niggardly hand,
+ The hours and the miles are counted, the tributes numbered and weighed,
+ And woe to him that comes short, and woe to him that delayed!"
+ So spoke on the beach the mother, and counselled the wiser thing.
+ For Rahéro stirred in the country and secretly mined the king.
+ Nor were the signals wanting of how the leaven wrought,
+ In the cords of obedience loosed and the tributes grudgingly brought.
+ And when last to the temple of Oro the boat with the victim sped,
+ And the priest uncovered the basket and looked on the face of the dead,
+ Trembling fell upon all at sight of an ominous thing,
+ For there was the aito[1] dead, and he of the house of the king.
+
+ So spake on the beach the mother, matter worthy of note,
+ And wattled a basket well, and chose a fish from the boat;
+ And Támatéa the pliable shouldered the basket and went,
+ And travelled, and sang as he travelled, a lad that was well content.
+ Still the way of his going was round by the roaring coast,
+ Where the ring of the reef is broke and the trades run riot the most.
+ On his left, with smoke as of battle, the billows battered the land;
+ Unscalable, turreted mountains rose on the inner hand.
+ And cape, and village, and river, and vale, and mountain above,
+ Each had a name in the land for men to remember and love;
+ And never the name of a place, but lo! a song in its praise:
+ Ancient and unforgotten, songs of the earlier days
+ That the elders taught to the young, and at night, in the full of the
+ moon,
+ Garlanded boys and maidens sang together in tune.
+ Támatéa the placable went with a lingering foot;
+ He sang as loud as a bird, he whistled hoarse as a flute;
+ He broiled in the sun, he breathed in the grateful shadow of trees,
+ In the icy stream of the rivers he waded over the knees;
+ And still in his empty mind crowded, a thousand-fold,
+ The deeds of the strong and the songs of the cunning heroes of old.
+
+ And now was he come to a place Taiárapu honoured the most,
+ Where a silent valley of woods debouched on the noisy coast,
+ Spewing a level river. There was a haunt of Pai.[2]
+ There, in his potent youth, when his parents drove him to die,
+ Honoura lived like a beast, lacking the lamp and the fire,
+ Washed by the rains of the trade and clotting his hair in the mire;
+ And there, so mighty his hands, he bent the tree to his foot--
+ So keen the spur of his hunger, he plucked it naked of fruit.
+ There, as she pondered the clouds for the shadow of coming ills,
+ Ahupu, the woman of song, walked on high on the hills.
+
+ Of these was Rahéro sprung, a man of a godly race;
+ And inherited cunning of spirit, and beauty of body and face.
+ Of yore in his youth, as an aito, Rahéro wandered the land,
+ Delighting maids with his tongue, smiting men with his hand.
+ Famous he was in his youth; but before the midst of his life
+ Paused, and fashioned a song of farewell to glory and strife.
+
+ _House of mine_ (it went), _house upon the sea,
+ Belov'd of all my fathers, more belov'd by me!
+ Vale of the strong Honoura, deep ravine of Pai,
+ Again in your woody summits I hear the trade-wind cry_.
+
+ _House of mine, in your walls, strong sounds the sea,
+ Of all sounds on earth, dearest sound to me.
+ I have heard the applause of men, I have heard it arise and die:
+ Sweeter now in my house I hear the trade-wind cry._
+
+ These were the words of his singing, other the thought of his heart;
+ For secret desire of glory vexed him, dwelling apart.
+ Lazy and crafty he was, and loved to lie in the sun,
+ And loved the cackle of talk and the true word uttered in fun;
+ Lazy he was, his roof was ragged, his table was lean,
+ And the fish swam safe in his sea, and he gathered the near and the
+ green.
+ He sat in his house and laughed, but he loathed the king of the land,
+ And he uttered the grudging word under the covering hand.
+ Treason spread from his door; and he looked for a day to come,
+ A day of the crowding people, a day of the summoning drum,
+ When the vote should be taken, the king be driven forth in disgrace,
+ And Rahéro, the laughing and lazy, sit and rule in his place.
+
+ Here Támatéa came, and beheld the house on the brook;
+ And Rahéro was there by the way and covered an oven to cook.[3]
+ Naked he was to the loins, but the tattoo covered the lack,
+ And the sun and the shadow of palms dappled his muscular back.
+ Swiftly he lifted his head at the fall of the coming feet,
+ And the water sprang in his mouth with a sudden desire of meat:
+ For he marked the basket carried, covered from flies and the sun;[4]
+ And Rahéro buried his fire, but the meat in his house was done.
+
+ Forth he stepped; and took, and delayed the boy, by the hand;
+ And vaunted the joys of meat and the ancient ways of the land:
+ --"Our sires of old in Taiárapu, they that created the race,
+ Ate ever with eager hand, nor regarded season or place,
+ Ate in the boat at the oar, on the way afoot; and at night
+ Arose in the midst of dreams to rummage the house for a bite.
+ It is good for the youth in his turn to follow the way of the sire;
+ And behold how fitting the time! for here do I cover my fire."
+ --"I see the fire for the cooking, but never the meat to cook,"
+ Said Támatéa.--"Tut!" said Rahéro. "Here in the brook,
+ And there in the tumbling sea, the fishes are thick as flies,
+ Hungry like healthy men, and like pigs for savour and size:
+ Crayfish crowding the river, sea-fish thronging the sea."
+ --"Well, it may be," says the other, "and yet be nothing to me.
+ Fain would I eat, but alas! I have needful matter in hand,
+ Since I carry my tribute of fish to the jealous king of the land."
+
+ Now at the word a light sprang in Rahéro's eyes.
+ "I will gain me a dinner," thought he, "and lend the king a surprise."
+ And he took the lad by the arm, as they stood by the side of the track,
+ And smiled, and rallied, and flattered, and pushed him forward and back.
+ It was "You that sing like a bird, I never have heard you sing,"
+ And "The lads when I was a lad were none so feared of a king.
+ And of what account is an hour, when the heart is empty of guile?
+ But come, and sit in the house and laugh with the women awhile;
+ And I will but drop my hook, and behold! the dinner made."
+
+ So Támatéa the pliable hung up his fish in the shade
+ On a tree by the side of the way; and Rahéro carried him in,
+ Smiling as smiles the fowler when flutters the bird to the gin,
+ And chose him a shining hook,[5] and viewed it with sedulous eye,
+ And breathed and burnished it well on the brawn of his naked thigh,
+ And set a mat for the gull, and bade him be merry and bide,
+ Like a man concerned for his guest, and the fishing, and nothing beside.
+
+ Now when Rahéro was forth, he paused and hearkened, and heard
+ The gull jest in the house and the women laugh at his word;
+ And stealthily crossed to the side of the way, to the shady place
+ Where the basket hung on a mango; and craft transfigured his face.
+ Deftly he opened the basket, and took of the fat of the fish,
+ The cut of kings and chieftains, enough for a goodly dish.
+ This he wrapped in a leaf, set on the fire to cook,
+ And buried; and next the marred remains of the tribute he took,
+ And doubled and packed them well, and covered the basket close.
+ --"There is a buffet, my king," quoth he, "and a nauseous dose!"--
+ And hung the basket again in the shade, in a cloud of flies;
+ --"And there is a sauce to your dinner, king of the crafty eyes!"
+
+ Soon as the oven was open, the fish smelt excellent good.
+ In the shade, by the house of Rahéro, down they sat to their food,
+ And cleared the leaves,[6] in silence, or uttered a jest and laughed
+ And raising the cocoa-nut bowls, buried their faces and quaffed.
+ But chiefly in silence they ate; and soon as the meal was done,
+ Rahéro feigned to remember and measured the hour by the sun
+ And "Támatéa," quoth he, "it is time to be jogging, my lad."
+
+ So Támatéa arose, doing ever the thing he was bade,
+ And carelessly shouldered the basket, and kindly saluted his host;
+ And again the way of his going was round by the roaring coast.
+ Long he went; and at length was aware of a pleasant green,
+ And the stems and shadows of palms, and roofs of lodges between.
+ There sate, in the door of his palace, the king on a kingly seat,
+ And aitos stood armed around, and the yottowas[7] sat at his feet.
+ But fear was a worm in his heart: fear darted his eyes;
+ And he probed men's faces for treasons and pondered their speech for
+ lies.
+ To him came Támatéa, the basket slung in his hand,
+ And paid him the due obeisance standing as vassals stand.
+ In silence hearkened the king, and closed the eyes in his face,
+ Harbouring odious thoughts and the baseless fears of the base;
+ In silence accepted the gift and sent the giver away.
+ So Támatéa departed, turning his back on the day.
+
+ And lo! as the king sat brooding, a rumour rose in the crowd;
+ The yottowas nudged and whispered, the commons murmured aloud;
+ Tittering fell upon all at sight of the impudent thing,
+ At the sight of a gift unroyal flung in the face of a king.
+ And the face of the king turned white and red with anger and shame
+ In their midst; and the heart in his body was water and then was flame;
+ Till of a sudden, turning, he gripped an aito hard,
+ A youth that stood with his ómare,[8] one of the daily guard,
+ And spat in his ear a command, and pointed and uttered a name,
+ And hid in the shade of the house his impotent anger and shame.
+
+ Now Támatéa the fool was far on his homeward way,
+ The rising night in his face, behind him the dying day.
+ Rahéro saw him go by, and the heart of Rahéro was glad,
+ Devising shame to the king and nowise harm to the lad;
+ And all that dwelt by the way saw and saluted him well,
+ For he had the face of a friend and the news of the town to tell;
+ And pleased with the notice of folk, and pleased that his journey was
+ done,
+ Támatéa drew homeward, turning his back to the sun.
+
+ And now was the hour of the bath in Taiárapu: far and near
+ The lovely laughter of bathers rose and delighted his ear.
+ Night massed in the valleys; the sun on the mountain coast
+ Struck, end-long; and above the clouds embattled their host,
+ And glowed and gloomed on the heights; and the heads of the palms were
+ gems,
+ And far to the rising eve extended the shade of their stems;
+ And the shadow of Támatéa hovered already at home.
+
+ And sudden the sound of one coming and running light as the foam
+ Struck on his ear; and he turned, and lo! a man on his track,
+ Girded and armed with an ómare, following hard at his back.
+ At a bound the man was upon him;--and, or ever a word was said,
+ The loaded end of the ómare fell and laid him dead.
+
+
+II
+
+THE VENGING OF TÁMATÉA
+
+ Thus was Rahéro's treason; thus and no further it sped.
+ The king sat safe in his place and a kindly fool was dead.
+
+ But the mother of Támatéa arose with death in her eyes.
+ All night long, and the next, Taiárapu rang with her cries.
+ As when a babe in the wood turns with a chill of doubt
+ And perceives nor home, nor friends, for the trees have closed her
+ about,
+ The mountain rings and her breast is torn with the voice of despair:
+ So the lion-like woman idly wearied the air
+ For a while, and pierced men's hearing in vain, and wounded their
+ hearts.
+ But as when the weather changes at sea, in dangerous parts,
+ And sudden the hurricane wrack unrolls up the front of the sky,
+ At once the ship lies idle, the sails hang silent on high,
+ The breath of the wind that blew is blown out like the flame of a lamp,
+ And the silent armies of death draw near with inaudible tramp:
+ So sudden, the voice of her weeping ceased; in silence she rose
+ And passed from the house of her sorrow, a woman clothed with repose,
+ Carrying death in her breast and sharpening death in her hand.
+
+ Hither she went and thither in all the coasts of the land.
+ They tell that she feared not to slumber alone, in the dead of night,
+ In accursed places; beheld, unblenched, the ribbon of light[9]
+ Spin from temple to temple; guided the perilous skiff,
+ Abhorred not the paths of the mountain and trod the verge of the cliff;
+ From end to end of the island, thought not the distance long,
+ But forth from king to king carried the tale of her wrong.
+ To king after king, as they sat in the palace door, she came,
+ Claiming kinship, declaiming verses, naming her name
+ And the names of all of her fathers; and still, with a heart on the
+ rack,
+ Jested to capture a hearing and laughed when they jested back;
+ So would deceive them a while, and change and return in a breath,
+ And on all the men of Vaiau imprecate instant death;
+ And tempt her kings--for Vaiau was a rich and prosperous land,
+ And flatter--for who would attempt it but warriors mighty of hand?
+ And change in a breath again and rise in a strain of song,
+ Invoking the beaten drums, beholding the fall of the strong,
+ Calling the fowls of the air to come and feast on the dead.
+ And they held the chin in silence, and heard her, and shook the head;
+ For they knew the men of Taiárapu famous in battle and feast,
+ Marvellous eaters and smiters: the men of Vaiau not least.
+ To the land of the Námunu-úra, to Paea,[10] at length she came,
+ To men who were foes to the Tevas and hated their race and name.
+ There was she well received, and spoke with Hiopa the king.[11]
+ And Hiopa listened, and weighed, and wisely considered the thing.
+ "Here in the back of the isle we dwell in a sheltered place,"
+ Quoth he to the woman, "in quiet, a weak and peaceable race.
+ But far in the teeth of the wind lofty Taiárapu lies;
+ Strong blows the wind of the trade on its seaward face, and cries
+ Aloud in the top of arduous mountains, and utters its song
+ In green continuous forests. Strong is the wind, and strong
+ And fruitful and hardy the race, famous in battle and feast,
+ Marvellous eaters and smiters: the men of Vaiau not least.
+ Now hearken to me, my daughter, and hear a word of the wise:
+ How a strength goes linked with a weakness, two by two, like the eyes.
+ They can wield the ómare well and cast the javelin far;
+ Yet are they greedy and weak as the swine and the children are.
+ Plant we, then, here at Paea a garden of excellent fruits;
+ Plant we bananas and kava and taro, the king of roots;
+ Let the pigs in Paea be tapu[12] and no man fish for a year;
+ And of all the meat in Tahiti gather we threefold here.
+ So shall the fame of our plenty fill the island and so,
+ At last, on the tongue of rumour, go where we wish it to go.
+ Then shall the pigs of Taiárapu raise their snouts in the air;
+ But we sit quiet and wait, as the fowler sits by the snare,
+ And tranquilly fold our hands, till the pigs come nosing the food:
+ But meanwhile build us a house of Trotéa, the stubborn wood,
+ Bind it with incombustible thongs, set a roof to the room,
+ Too strong for the hands of a man to dissever or fire to consume;
+ And there, when the pigs come trotting, there shall the feast be spread,
+ There shall the eye of the morn enlighten the feasters dead.
+ So be it done; for I have a heart that pities your state,
+ And Nateva and Námunu-úra are fire and water for hate."
+
+ All was done as he said, and the gardens prospered; and now
+ The fame of their plenty went out, and word of it came to Vaiau.
+ For the men of Námunu-úra sailed, to the windward far,
+ Lay in the offing by south where the towns of the Tevas are,
+ And cast overboard of their plenty; and lo! at the Tevas' feet
+ The surf on all the beaches tumbled treasures of meat.
+ In the salt of the sea, a harvest tossed with the refluent foam;
+ And the children gleaned it in playing, and ate and carried it home;
+ And the elders stared and debated, and wondered and passed the jest,
+ But whenever a guest came by eagerly questioned the guest;
+ And little by little, from one to another, the word went round:
+ "In all the borders of Paea the victual rots on the ground,
+ And swine are plenty as rats. And now, when they fare to the sea,
+ The men of the Námunu-úra glean from under the tree
+ And load the canoe to the gunwale with all that is toothsome to eat;
+ And all day long on the sea the jaws are crushing the meat,
+ The steersman eats at the helm, the rowers munch at the oar,
+ And at length, when their bellies are full, overboard with the store!"
+ Now was the word made true, and soon as the bait was bare,
+ All the pigs of Taiárapu raised their snouts in the air.
+ Songs were recited, and kinship was counted, and tales were told
+ How war had severed of late but peace had cemented of old
+ The clans of the island. "To war," said they, "now set we an end,
+ And hie to the Námunu-úra even as a friend to a friend."
+
+ So judged, and a day was named; and soon as the morning broke,
+ Canoes were thrust in the sea, and the houses emptied of folk.
+ Strong blew the wind of the south, the wind that gathers the clan;
+ Along all the line of the reef the clamorous surges ran;
+ And the clouds were piled on the top of the island mountain-high,
+ A mountain throned on a mountain. The fleet of canoes swept by
+ In the midst, on the green lagoon, with a crew released from care,
+ Sailing an even water, breathing a summer air,
+ Cheered by a cloudless sun; and ever to left and right,
+ Bursting surge on the reef, drenching storms on the height.
+ So the folk of Vaiau sailed and were glad all day,
+ Coasting the palm-tree cape and crossing the populous bay
+ By all the towns of the Tevas; and still as they bowled along,
+ Boat would answer to boat with jest and laughter and song,
+ And the people of all the towns trooped to the sides of the sea,
+ And gazed from under the hand or sprang aloft on the tree
+ Hailing and cheering. Time failed them for more to do;
+ The holiday village careened to the wind, and was gone from view
+ Swift as a passing bird; and ever as onward it bore,
+ Like the cry of the passing bird, bequeathed its song to the shore--
+ Desirable laughter of maids and the cry of delight of the child.
+ And the gazer, left behind, stared at the wake and smiled.
+ By all the towns of the Tevas they went, and Pápara last,
+ The home of the chief, the place of muster in war; and passed
+ The march of the lands of the clan, to the lands of an alien folk.
+ And there, from the dusk of the shoreside palms, a column of smoke
+ Mounted and wavered and died in the gold of the setting sun,
+ "Paea!" they cried. "It is Paea." And so was the voyage done.
+
+ In the early fall of the night Hiopa came to the shore,
+ And beheld and counted the comers, and lo, they were forty score;
+ The pelting feet of the babes that ran already and played,
+ The clean-lipped smile of the boy, the slender breasts of the maid,
+ And mighty limbs of women, stalwart mothers of men.
+ The sires stood forth unabashed; but a little back from
+ his ken
+ Clustered the scarcely nubile, the lads and maids, in a ring,
+ Fain of each other, afraid of themselves, aware of the king
+ And aping behaviour, but clinging together with hands and eyes,
+ With looks that were kind like kisses, and laughter tender as sighs.
+ There, too, the grandsire stood, raising his silver crest,
+ And the impotent hands of a suckling groped in his barren breast.
+ The childhood of love, the pair well married, the innocent brood,
+ The tale of the generations repeated and ever renewed--
+ Hiopa beheld them together, all the ages of man,
+ And a moment shook in his purpose.
+
+ But these were the foes of his clan,
+ And he trod upon pity, and came, and civilly greeted the king,
+ And gravely entreated Rahéro; and for all that could fight or sing,
+ And claimed a name in the land, had fitting phrases of praise:
+ But with all who were well-descended he spoke of the ancient days.
+ And "'Tis true," said he, "that in Paea the victual rots on the ground;
+ But, friends, your number is many; and pigs must be hunted and found,
+ And the lads must troop to the mountains to bring the féis down,
+ And around the bowls of the kava cluster the maids of the town.
+ So, for to-night, sleep here; but king, common, and priest
+ To-morrow, in order due, shall sit with me in the feast."
+ Sleepless the live-long night, Hiopa's followers toiled.
+ The pigs screamed and were slaughtered; the spars of the guest-house
+ oiled,
+ The leaves spread on the floor. In many a mountain glen
+ The moon drew shadows of trees on the naked bodies of men
+ Plucking and bearing fruits; and in all the bounds of the town
+ Red glowed the cocoa-nut fires, and were buried and trodden down.
+ Thus did seven of the yottowas toil with their tale of the clan,
+ But the eighth wrought with his lads, hid from the sight of man.
+ In the deeps of the woods they laboured, piling the fuel high
+ In fagots, the load of a man, fuel seasoned and dry,
+ Thirsty to seize upon fire and apt to blurt into flame.
+
+ And now was the day of the feast. The forests, as morning came,
+ Tossed in the wind, and the peaks quaked in the blaze of the day--
+ And the cocoa-nuts showered on the ground, rebounding and rolling away:
+ A glorious morn for a feast, a famous wind for a fire.
+ To the hall of feasting Hiopa led them, mother and sire
+ And maid and babe in a tale, the whole of the holiday throng.
+ Smiling they came, garlanded green, not dreaming of wrong;
+ And for every three, a pig, tenderly cooked in the ground,
+ Waited; and féi, the staff of life, heaped in a mound
+ For each where he sat;--for each, bananas roasted and raw
+ Piled with a bountiful hand, as for horses hay and straw
+ Are stacked in a stable; and fish, the food of desire,[13]
+ And plentiful vessels of sauce, and bread-fruit gilt in the fire;--
+ And kava was common as water. Feasts have there been ere now,
+ And many, but never a feast like that of the folk of Vaiau.
+ All day long they ate with the resolute greed of brutes,
+ And turned from the pigs to the fish, and again from the fish to the
+ fruits,
+ And emptied the vessels of sauce, and drank of the kava deep;
+ Till the young lay stupid as stones, and the strongest nodded to sleep.
+ Sleep that was mighty as death and blind as a moonless night
+ Tethered them hand and foot; and their souls were drowned, and the light
+ Was cloaked from their eyes. Senseless together, the old and the young,
+ The fighter deadly to smite and the prater cunning of tongue,
+ The woman wedded and fruitful, inured to the pangs of birth,
+ And the maid that knew not of kisses, blindly sprawled on the earth.
+ From the hall Hiopa the king and his chiefs came stealthily forth.
+
+ Already the sun hung low and enlightened the peaks of the north;
+ But the wind was stubborn to die and blew as it blows at morn,
+ Showering the nuts in the dusk, and e'en as a banner is torn,
+ High on the peaks of the island, shattered the mountain cloud.
+ And now at once, at a signal, a silent, emulous crowd
+ Set hands to the work of death, hurrying to and fro,
+ Like ants, to furnish the fagots, building them broad and low,
+ And piling them high and higher around the walls of the hall.
+ Silence persisted within, for sleep lay heavy on all
+ But the mother of Támatéa stood at Hiopa's side,
+ And shook for terror and joy like a girl that is a bride,
+ Night fell on the toilers, and first Hiopa the wise
+ Made the round of the hose, visiting all with his eyes;
+ And all was piled to the eaves, and fuel blockaded the door;
+ And within, in the house beleaguered, slumbered the forty score.
+
+ Then was an aito despatched and came with fire in his hand,
+ And Hiopa took it.--"Within," said he, "is the life of a land;
+ And behold! I breathe on the coal, I breathe on the dales of the east,
+ And silence falls on forest and shore; the voice of the feast
+ Is quenched, and the smoke of cooking; the roof-tree decays and falls
+ On the empty lodge, and the winds subvert deserted walls."
+
+ Therewithal, to the fuel, he laid the glowing coal;
+ And the redness ran in the mass and burrowed within like a mole,
+ And copious smoke was conceived. But, as when a dam is to burst,
+ The water lips it and crosses in silver trickles at first,
+ And then, of a sudden, whelms and bears it away forthright;
+ So now, in a moment, the flame sprang and towered in the night,
+ And wrestled and roared in the wind, and high over house and tree,
+ Stood, like a streaming torch, enlightening land and sea.
+
+ But the mother of Támatéa threw her arms abroad,
+ "Pyre of my son," she shouted, "debited vengeance of God,
+ Late, late, I behold you, yet I behold you at last,
+ And glory, beholding! For now are the days of my agony past,
+ The lust that famished my soul now eats and drinks its desire,
+ And they that encompassed my son shrivel alive in the fire.
+ Tenfold precious the vengeance that comes after lingering years!
+ Ye quenched the voice of my singer?--hark, in your dying ears,
+ The song of the conflagration! Ye left me a widow alone?
+ --Behold, the whole of your race consumes, sinew and bone
+ And torturing flesh together: man, mother, and maid
+ Heaped in a common shambles; and already, borne by the trade,
+ The smoke of your dissolution darkens the stars of night."
+
+ Thus she spoke, and her stature grew in the people's sight.
+
+
+III
+
+RAHÉRO
+
+ Rahéro was there in the hall asleep: beside him his wife,
+ Comely, a mirthful woman, one that delighted in life;
+ And a girl that was ripe for marriage, shy and sly as a mouse;
+ And a boy, a climber of trees: all the hopes of his house.
+ Unwary, with open hands, he slept in the midst of his folk,
+ And dreamed that he heard a voice crying without, and awoke,
+ Leaping blindly afoot like one from a dream that he fears.
+ A hellish glow and clouds were about him;--it roared in his ears
+ Like the sound of the cataract fall that plunges sudden and steep;
+ And Rahéro swayed as he stood, and his reason was still asleep.
+ Now the flame struck hard on the house, wind-wielded, a fracturing blow,
+ And the end of the roof was burst and fell on the sleepers below;
+ And the lofty hall, and the feast, and the prostrate bodies of folk,
+ Shone red in his eyes a moment, and then were swallowed of smoke.
+ In the mind of Rahéro clearness came; and he opened his throat;
+ And as when a squall comes sudden, the straining sail of a boat
+ Thunders aloud and bursts, so thundered the voice of the man.
+ --"The wind and the rain!" he shouted, the mustering word of the
+ clan,[14]
+ And "Up!" and "To arms, men of Vaiau!" But silence replied,
+ Or only the voice of the gusts of the fire, and nothing beside.
+
+ Rahéro stooped and groped. He handled his womankind,
+ But the fumes of the fire and the kava had quenched the life of their
+ mind,
+ And they lay like pillars prone; and his hand encountered the boy,
+ And there sprang in the gloom of his soul a sudden lightning of joy.
+ "Him can I save!" he thought, "if I were speedy enough."
+ And he loosened the cloth from his loins, and swaddled the child in the
+ stuff:
+ And about the strength of his neck he knotted the burden well.
+
+ There where the roof had fallen, it roared like the mouth of hell.
+ Thither Rahéro went, stumbling on senseless folk,
+ And grappled a post of the house, and began to climb in the smoke:
+ The last alive of Vaiau; and the son borne by the sire.
+ The post glowed in the grain with ulcers of eating fire,
+ And the fire bit to the blood and mangled his hands and thighs;
+ And the fumes sang in his head like wine and stung in his eyes;
+ And still he climbed, and came to the top, the place of proof,
+ And thrust a hand through the flame, and clambered alive on the roof.
+ But even as he did so, the wind, in a garment of flames and pain,
+ Wrapped him from head to heel; and the waistcloth parted in twain;
+ And the living fruit of his loins dropped in the fire below.
+
+ About the blazing feast-house clustered the eyes of the foe,
+ Watching, hand upon weapon, lest ever a soul should flee,
+ Shading the brow from the glare, straining the neck to see.
+ Only, to leeward, the flames in the wind swept far and wide,
+ And the forest sputtered on fire; and there might no man abide.
+ Thither Rahéro crept, and dropped from the burning eaves,
+ And crouching low to the ground, in a treble covert of leaves
+ And fire and volleying smoke, ran for the life of his soul
+ Unseen; and behind him under a furnace of ardent coal,
+ Cairned with a wonder of flame, and blotting the night with smoke,
+ Blazed and were smelted together the bones of all his folk.
+
+ He fled unguided at first; but hearing the breakers roar,
+ Thitherward shaped his way, and came at length to the shore.
+ Sound-limbed he was: dry-eyed; but smarted in every part;
+ And the mighty cage of his ribs heaved on his straining heart
+ With sorrow and rage. And "Fools!" he cried, "fools of Vaiau,
+ Heads of swine--gluttons--Alas! and where are they now?
+ Those that I played with, those that nursed me, those that I nursed?
+ God, and I outliving them! I, the least and the worst--
+ I, that thought myself crafty, snared by this herd of swine,
+ In the tortures of hell and desolate, stripped of all that was mine:
+ All!--my friends and my fathers--the silver heads of yore
+ That trooped to the council, the children that ran to the open door
+ Crying with innocent voices and clasping a father's knees!
+ And mine, my wife--my daughter--my sturdy climber of trees,
+ Ah, never to climb again!"
+
+ Thus in the dusk of the night
+ (For clouds rolled in the sky and the moon was swallowed from sight),
+ Pacing and gnawing his fists, Rahéro raged by the shore.
+ Vengeance: that must be his. But much was to do before;
+ And first a single life to be snatched from a deadly place,
+ A life, the root of revenge, surviving plant of the race:
+ And next the race to be raised anew, and the lands of the clan
+ Repeopled. So Rahéro designed, a prudent man
+ Even in wrath, and turned for the means of revenge and escape:
+ A boat to be seized by stealth, a wife to be taken by rape.
+
+ Still was the dark lagoon; beyond on the coral wall,
+ He saw the breakers shine, he heard them bellow and fall.
+ Alone, on the top of the reef, a man with a flaming brand
+ Walked, gazing and pausing, a fish-spear poised in his hand.
+ The foam boiled to his calf when the mightier breakers came,
+ And the torch shed in the wind scattering tufts of flame
+ Afar on the dark lagoon a canoe lay idly at wait:
+ A figure dimly guiding it: surely the fisherman's mate.
+ Rahéro saw and he smiled. He straightened his mighty thews:
+ Naked, with never a weapon, and covered with scorch and bruise,
+ He straightened his arms, he filled the void of his body with breath,
+ And, strong as the wind in his manhood, doomed the fisher to death.
+
+ Silent he entered the water, and silently swam, and came
+ There where the fisher walked, holding on high the flame.
+ Loud on the pier of the reef volleyed the breach of the sea;
+ And hard at the back of the man, Rahéro crept to his knee
+ On the coral, and suddenly sprang and seized him, the elder hand
+ Clutching the joint of his throat, the other snatching the brand
+ Ere it had time to fall, and holding it steady and high.
+ Strong was the fisher, brave, and swift of mind and of eye--
+ Strongly he threw in the clutch; but Rahéro resisted the strain,
+ And jerked, and the spine of life snapped with a crack in twain,
+ And the man came slack in his hands and tumbled a lump at his feet.
+
+ One moment: and there, on the reef, where the breakers whitened and
+ beat,
+ Rahéro was standing alone, glowing, and scorched and bare,
+ A victor unknown of any, raising the torch in the air.
+ But once he drank of his breath, and instantly set him to fish
+ Like a man intent upon supper at home and a savoury dish.
+ For what should the woman have seen? A man with a torch--and then
+ A moment's blur of the eyes--and a man with a torch again.
+ And the torch had scarcely been shaken. "Ah, surely," Rahéro said,
+ "She will deem it a trick of the eyes, a fancy born in the head;
+ But time must be given the fool to nourish a fool's belief."
+ So for a while, a sedulous fisher, he walked the reef,
+ Pausing at times and gazing, striking at times with the spear:
+ --Lastly, uttered the call; and even as the boat drew near,
+ Like a man that was done with its use, tossed the torch in the sea.
+
+ Lightly he leaped on the boat beside the woman; and she
+ Lightly addressed him, and yielded the paddle and place to sit;
+ For now the torch was extinguished the night was black as the pit.
+ Rahéro set him to row, never a word he spoke,
+ And the boat sang in the water urged by his vigorous stroke.
+ --"What ails you?" the woman asked, "and why did you drop the brand?
+ We have only to kindle another as soon as we come to land."
+ Never a word Rahéro replied, but urged the canoe.
+ And a chill fell on the woman.--"Atta! speak! is it you?
+ Speak! Why are you silent? Why do you bend aside?
+ Wherefore steer to the seaward?" thus she panted and cried.
+ Never a word from the oarsman, toiling there in the dark;
+ But right for a gate of the reef he silently headed the bark,
+ And wielding the single paddle with passionate sweep on sweep,
+ Drove her, the little fitted, forth on the open deep.
+ And fear, there where she sat, froze the woman to stone:
+ Not fear of the crazy boat and the weltering deep alone;
+ But a keener fear of the night, the dark, and the ghostly hour,
+ And the thing that drove the canoe with more than a mortal's power
+ And more than a mortal's boldness. For much she knew of the dead
+ That haunt and fish upon reefs, toiling, like men, for bread,
+ And traffic with human fishers, or slay them and take their ware,
+ Till the hour when the star of the dead[15] goes down, and the morning
+ air
+ Blows, and the cocks are singing on shore. And surely she knew
+ The speechless thing at her side belonged to the grave.[16]
+
+ It blew
+ All night from the south; all night, Rahéro contended and kept
+ The prow to the cresting sea; and, silent as though she slept,
+ The woman huddled and quaked. And now was the peep of day.
+ High and long on their left the mountainous island lay;
+ And over the peaks of Taiárapu arrows of sunlight struck.
+ On shore the birds were beginning to sing: the ghostly ruck
+ Of the buried had long ago returned to the covered grave;
+ And here on the sea, the woman, waxing suddenly brave,
+ Turned her swiftly about and looked in the face of the man.
+ And sure he was none that she knew, none of her country or clan:
+ A stranger, mother-naked, and marred with the marks of fire,
+ But comely and great of stature, a man to obey and admire.
+
+ And Rahéro regarded her also, fixed, with a frowning face,
+ Judging the woman's fitness to mother a warlike race.
+ Broad of shoulder, ample of girdle, long in the thigh,
+ Deep of bosom she was, and bravely supported his eye.
+
+ "Woman," said he, "last night the men of your folk--
+ Man, woman, and maid, smothered my race in smoke.
+ It was done like cowards; and I, a mighty man of my hands,
+ Escaped, a single life; and now to the empty lands
+ And smokeless hearths of my people, sail, with yourself, alone.
+ Before your mother was born, the die of to-day was thrown
+ And you selected:--your husband, vainly striving, to fall
+ Broken between these hands:--yourself to be severed from all,
+ The places, the people, you love--home, kindred, and clan--
+ And to dwell in a desert and bear the babes of a kinless man."
+
+
+
+
+THE FEAST OF FAMINE
+
+MARQUESAN MANNERS
+
+
+I
+
+THE PRIEST'S VIGIL
+
+ In all the land of the tribe was neither fish nor fruit,
+ And the deepest pit of popoi stood empty to the foot.[1]
+ The clans upon the left and the clans upon the right
+ Now oiled their carven maces and scoured their daggers bright;
+ They gat them to the thicket, to the deepest of the shade,
+ And lay with sleepless eyes in the deadly ambuscade.
+ And oft in the starry even the song of morning rose,
+ What time the oven smoked in the country of their foes;
+ For oft to loving hearts, and waiting ears and sight,
+ The lads that went to forage returned not with the night.
+ Now first the children sickened, and then the women paled,
+ And the great arms of the warrior no more for war availed.
+ Hushed was the deep drum, discarded was the dance;
+ And those that met the priest now glanced at him askance.
+ The priest was a man of years, his eyes were ruby-red,[2]
+ He neither feared the dark nor the terrors of the dead,
+ He knew the songs of races, the names of ancient date;
+ And the beard upon his bosom would have bought the chief's estate.
+ He dwelt in a high-built lodge, hard by the roaring shore,
+ Raised on a noble terrace and with tikis[3] at the door.
+ Within it was full of riches, for he served his nation well,
+ And full of the sound of breakers, like the hollow of a shell.
+ For weeks he let them perish, gave never a helping sign,
+ But sat on his oiled platform to commune with the divine,
+ But sat on his high terrace, with the tikis by his side,
+ And stared on the blue ocean, like a parrot, ruby-eyed.
+
+ Dawn as yellow as sulphur leaped on the mountain height:
+ Out on the round of the sea the gems of the morning light,
+ Up from the round of the sea the streamers of the sun;--
+ But down in the depths of the valley the day was not begun.
+ In the blue of the woody twilight burned red the cocoa-husk,
+ And the women and men of the clan went forth to bathe in the dusk,
+ A word that began to go round, a word, a whisper, a start:
+ Hope that leaped in the bosom, fear that knocked on the heart:
+ "See, the priest is not risen--look, for his door is fast!
+ He is going to name the victims; he is going to help us at last."
+
+ Thrice rose the sun to noon; and ever, like one of the dead,
+ The priest lay still in his house, with the roar of the sea in his head;
+ There was never a foot on the floor, there was never a whisper of
+ speech;
+ Only the leering tikis stared on the blinding beach.
+ Again were the mountains fired, again the morning broke;
+ And all the houses lay still, but the house of the priest awoke.
+ Close in their covering roofs lay and trembled the clan,
+ But the aged, red-eyed priest ran forth like a lunatic man;
+ And the village panted to see him in the jewels of death again,
+ In the silver beards of the old and the hair of women slain.
+ Frenzy shook in his limbs, frenzy shone in his eyes,
+ And still and again as he ran, the valley rang with his cries.
+ All day long in the land, by cliff and thicket and den,
+ He ran his lunatic rounds, and howled for the flesh of men;
+ All day long he ate not, nor ever drank of the brook;
+ And all day long in their houses the people listened and shook--
+ All day long in their houses they listened with bated breath,
+ And never a soul went forth, for the sight of the priest was death.
+
+ Three were the days of his running, as the gods appointed of yore,
+ Two the nights of his sleeping alone in the place of gore:
+ The drunken slumber of frenzy twice he drank to the lees,
+ On the sacred stones of the High-place under the sacred trees;
+ With a lamp at his ashen head he lay in the place of the feast,
+ And the sacred leaves of the banyan rustled around the priest.
+ Last, when the stated even fell upon terrace and tree,
+ And the shade of the lofty island lay leagues away to sea,
+ And all the valleys of verdure were heavy with manna and musk,
+ The wreck of the red-eyed priest came gasping home in the dusk.
+ He reeled across the village, he staggered along the shore,
+ And between the leering tikis crept groping through his door.
+
+ There went a stir through the lodges, the voice of speech awoke;
+ Once more from the builded platforms arose the evening smoke.
+ And those who were mighty in war, and those renowned for an art
+ Sat in their stated seats and talked of the morrow apart.
+
+
+II
+
+THE LOVERS
+
+ Hark! away in the woods--for the ears of love are sharp--
+ Stealthily, quietly touched, the note of the one-stringed harp.[4]
+ In the lighted house of her father, why should Taheia start?
+ Taheia heavy of hair, Taheia tender of heart,
+ Taheia the well-descended, a bountiful dealer in love,
+ Nimble of foot like the deer, and kind of eye like the dove?
+ Sly and shy as a cat, with never a change of face,
+ Taheia slips to the door, like one that would breathe a space;
+ Saunters and pauses, and looks at the stars, and lists to the seas;
+ Then sudden and swift as a cat, she plunges under the trees.
+ Swift as a cat she runs, with her garment gathered high,
+ Leaping, nimble of foot, running, certain of eye;
+ And ever to guide her way over the smooth and the sharp,
+ Ever nearer and nearer the note of the one-stringed harp;
+ Till at length, in a glade of the wood, with a naked mountain above,
+ The sound of the harp thrown down, and she in the arms of her love.
+ "Rua,"--"Taheia," they cry--"my heart, my soul, and my eyes,"
+ And clasp and sunder and kiss, with lovely laughter and sighs,
+ "Rua!"--"Taheia, my love,"--"Rua, star of my night,
+ Clasp me, hold me, and love me, single spring of delight."
+
+ And Rua folded her close, he folded her near and long,
+ The living knit to the living, and sang the lover's song:
+
+ _Night, night it is, night upon the palms.
+ Night, night it is, the land-wind has blown.
+ Starry, starry night, over deep and height;
+ Love, love in the valley, love all alone._
+
+ "Taheia, heavy of hair, a foolish thing have we done,
+ To bind what gods have sundered unkindly into one.
+ Why should a lowly lover have touched Taheia's skirt,
+ Taheia the well-descended, and Rua child of the dirt?"
+
+ --"On high with the haka-ikis my father sits in state,
+ Ten times fifty kinsmen salute him in the gate;
+ Round all his martial body, and in bands across his face,
+ The marks of the tattooer proclaim his lofty place.
+ I too, in the hands of the cunning, in the sacred cabin of palm,[5]
+ Have shrunk like the mimosa, and bleated like the lamb;
+ Round half my tender body, that none shall clasp but you,
+ For a crest and a fair adornment go dainty lines of blue.
+ Love, love, beloved Rua, love levels all degrees,
+ And the well-tattooed Taheia clings panting to your knees."
+
+ --"Taheia, song of the morning, how long is the longest love?
+ A cry, a clasp of the hands, a star that falls from above!
+ Ever at morn in the blue, and at night when all is black,
+ Ever it skulks and trembles with the hunter, Death, on its track.
+ Hear me, Taheia, death! For to-morrow the priest shall awake,
+ And the names be named of the victims to bleed for the nation's sake;
+ And first of the numbered many that shall be slain ere noon,
+ Rua the child of the dirt, Rua the kinless loon.
+ For him shall the drum be beat, for him be raised the song,
+ For him to the sacred High-place the chanting people throng,
+ For him the oven smoke as for a speechless beast,
+ And the sire of my Taheia come greedy to the feast."
+ "Rua, be silent, spare me. Taheia closes her ears.
+ Pity my yearning heart, pity my girlish years!
+ Flee from the cruel hands, flee from the knife and coal,
+ Lie hid in the deeps of the woods, Rua, sire of my soul!"
+
+ "Whither to flee, Taheia, whither in all of the land?
+ The fires of the bloody kitchen are kindled on every hand;
+ On every hand in the isle a hungry whetting of teeth,
+ Eyes in the trees above, arms in the brush beneath.
+ Patience to lie in wait, cunning to follow the sleuth,
+ Abroad the foes I have fought, and at home the friends of my youth."
+
+ "Love, love, beloved Rua, love has a clearer eye,
+ Hence from the arms of love you go not forth to die.
+ There, where the broken mountain drops sheer into the glen,
+ There shall you find a hold from the boldest hunter of men;
+ There, in the deep recess, where the sun falls only at noon,
+ And only once in the night enters the light of the moon,
+ Nor ever a sound but of birds, or the rain when it falls with a shout;
+ For death and the fear of death beleaguer the valley about.
+ Tapu it is, but the gods will surely pardon despair;
+ Tapu, but what of that? If Rua can only dare.
+ Tapu and tapu and tapu, I know they are every one right;
+ But the god of every tapu is not always quick to smite.
+ Lie secret there, my Rua, in the arms of awful gods,
+ Sleep in the shade of the trees on the couch of the kindly sods,
+ Sleep and dream of Taheia, Taheia will wake for you;
+ And whenever the land-wind blows and the woods are heavy with dew,
+ Alone through the horror of night,[6] with food for the soul of her
+ love,
+ Taheia the undissuaded will hurry true as the dove."
+
+ "Taheia, the pit of the night crawls with treacherous things,
+ Spirits of ultimate air and the evil souls of things;
+ The souls of the dead, the stranglers, that perch in the trees of the
+ wood,
+ Waiters for all things human, haters of evil and good."
+
+ "Rua, behold me, kiss me, look in my eyes and read;
+ Are these the eyes of a maid that would leave her lover in need?
+ Brave in the eye of day, my father ruled in the fight;
+ The child of his loins, Taheia, will play the man in the night."
+
+ So it was spoken, and so agreed, and Taheia arose
+ And smiled in the stars and was gone, swift as the swallow goes;
+ And Rua stood on the hill, and sighed, and followed her flight,
+ And there were the lodges below, each with its door alight;
+ From folk that sat on the terrace and drew out the even long
+ Sudden crowings of laughter, monotonous drone of song;
+ The quiet passage of souls over his head in the trees;[7]
+ And from all around the haven the crumbling thunder of seas.
+ "Farewell, my home," said Rua. "Farewell, O quiet seat!
+ To-morrow in all your valleys the drum of death shall beat."
+
+
+III
+
+THE FEAST
+
+ Dawn as yellow as sulphur leaped on the naked peak,
+ And all the village was stirring, for now was the priest to speak.
+ Forth on his terrace he came, and sat with the chief in talk;
+ His lips were blackened with fever, his cheeks were whiter than chalk;
+ Fever clutched at his hands, fever nodded his head,
+ But, quiet and steady and cruel, his eyes shone ruby-red.
+ In the earliest rays of the sun the chief rose up content;
+ Braves were summoned, and drummers; messengers came and went;
+ Braves ran to their lodges; weapons were snatched from the wall;
+ The commons herded together, and fear was over them all.
+ Festival dresses they wore, but the tongue was dry in their mouth,
+ And the blinking eyes in their faces skirted from north to south.
+
+ Now to the sacred enclosure gathered the greatest and least,
+ And from under the shade of the banyan arose the voice of the feast,
+ The frenzied roll of the drum, and a swift monotonous song.
+ Higher the sun swam up; the trade-wind level and strong
+ Awoke in the tops of the palms and rattled the fans aloud,
+ And over the garlanded heads and shining robes of the crowd
+ Tossed the spiders of shadow, scattered the jewels of sun.
+ Forty the tale of the drums, and the forty throbbed like one;
+ A thousand hearts in the crowd, and the even chorus of song,
+ Swift as the feet of a runner, trampled a thousand strong.
+ And the old men leered at the ovens and licked their lips for the food;
+ And the women stared at the lads, and laughed and looked to the wood.
+ As when the sweltering baker, at night, when the city is dead,
+ Alone in the trough of labour treads and fashions the bread;
+ So in the heat, and the reek, and the touch of woman and man,
+ The naked spirit of evil kneaded the hearts of the clan.
+
+ Now cold was at many a heart, and shaking in many a seat;
+ For there were the empty baskets, but who was to furnish the meat?
+ For here was the nation assembled, and there were the ovens anigh,
+ And out of a thousand singers nine were numbered to die.
+ Till, of a sudden, a shock, a mace in the air, a yell,
+ And, struck in the edge of the crowd, the first of the victims fell.[8]
+ Terror and horrible glee divided the shrinking clan,
+ Terror of what was to follow, glee for a diet of man.
+ Frenzy hurried the chant, frenzy rattled the drums;
+ The nobles, high on the terrace, greedily mouthed their thumbs;
+ And once and again and again, in the ignorant crowd below,
+ Once and again and again descended the murderous blow.
+ Now smoked the oven, and now, with the cutting lip of a shell,
+ A butcher of ninety winters jointed the bodies well.
+ Unto the carven lodge, silent, in order due,
+ The grandees of the nation one after one withdrew;
+ And a line of laden bearers brought to the terrace foot,
+ On poles across their shoulders, the last reserve of fruit.
+ The victims bled for the nobles in the old appointed way;
+ The fruit was spread for the commons, for all should eat to-day.
+ And now was the kava brewed, and now the cocoa ran,
+ Now was the hour of the dance for child and woman and man;
+ And mirth was in every heart and a garland on every head,
+ And all was well with the living and well with the eight who were dead.
+ Only the chiefs and the priest talked and consulted a while:
+ "To-morrow," they said, and "To-morrow," and nodded and seemed to smile:
+ "Rua the child of dirt, the creature of common clay,
+ Rua must die to-morrow, since Rua is gone to-day."
+ Out of the groves of the valley, where clear the blackbirds sang,
+ Sheer from the trees of the valley the face of the mountain sprang;
+ Sheer and bare it rose, unscalable barricade,
+ Beaten and blown against by the generous draught of the trade.
+ Dawn on its fluted brow painted rainbow light,
+ Close on its pinnacled crown trembled the stars at night.
+ Here and there in a cleft clustered contorted trees,
+ Or the silver beard of a stream hung and swung in the breeze,
+ High overhead, with a cry, the torrents leaped for the main,
+ And silently sprinkled below in thin perennial rain.
+ Dark in the staring noon, dark was Rua's ravine,
+ Damp and cold was the air, and the face of the cliffs was green.
+ Here, in the rocky pit, accursed already of old,
+ On a stone in the midst of a river, Rua sat and was cold.
+
+ "Valley of mid-day shadows, valley of silent falls,"
+ Rua sang, and his voice went hollow about the walls,
+ "Valley of shadow and rock, a doleful prison to me,
+ What is the life you can give to a child of the sun and the sea?"
+ And Rua arose and came to the open mouth of the glen,
+ Whence he beheld the woods, and the sea, and houses of men.
+ Wide blew the riotous trade, and smelt in his nostrils good;
+ It bowed the boats on the bay, and tore and divided the wood;
+ It smote and sundered the groves as Moses smote with the rod,
+ And the streamers of all the trees blew like banners abroad;
+ And ever and on, in a lull, the trade-wind brought him along
+ A far-off patter of drums and a far-off whisper of song.
+
+ Swift as the swallow's wings, the diligent hands on the drum
+ Fluttered and hurried and throbbed. "Ah, woe that I hear you come,"
+ Rua cried in his grief, "a sorrowful sound to me,
+ Mounting far and faint from the resonant shore of the sea!
+ Woe in the song! for the grave breathes in the singers' breath,
+ And I hear in the tramp of the drums the beat of the heart of death.
+ Home of my youth! no more through all the length of the years,
+ No more to the place of the echoes of early laughter and tears,
+ No more shall Rua return; no more as the evening ends,
+ To crowded eyes of welcome, to the reaching hands of friends."
+
+ All day long from the High-place the drums and the singing came,
+ And the even fell, and the sun went down, a wheel of flame;
+ And night came gleaning the shadows and hushing the sounds of the wood;
+ And silence slept on all, where Rua sorrowed and stood.
+ But still from the shore of the bay the sound of the festival rang,
+ And still the crowd in the High-place danced and shouted and sang.
+
+ Now over all the isle terror was breathed abroad
+ Of shadowy hands from the trees and shadowy snares in the sod;
+ And before the nostrils of night, the shuddering hunter of men
+ Hurried, with beard on shoulder, back to his lighted den.
+ "Taheia, here to my side!"--"Rua, my Rua, you!"
+ And cold from the clutch of terror, cold with the damp of the dew,
+ Taheia, heavy of hair, leaped through the dark to his arms;
+ Taheia leaped to his clasp, and was folded in from alarms.
+
+ "Rua, beloved, here, see what your love has brought;
+ Coming--alas! returning--swift as the shuttle of thought;
+ Returning, alas! for to-night, with the beaten drum and the voice,
+ In the shine of many torches must the sleepless clan rejoice;
+ And Taheia the well-descended, the daughter of chief and priest,
+ Taheia must sit in her place in the crowded bench of the feast."
+ So it was spoken; and she, girding her garment high,
+ Fled and was swallowed of woods, swift as the sight of an eye.
+
+ Night over isle and sea rolled her curtain of stars,
+ Then a trouble awoke in the air, the east was banded with bars;
+ Dawn as yellow as sulphur leaped on the mountain height;
+ Dawn, in the deepest glen, fell a wonder of light;
+ High and clear stood the palms in the eye of the brightening east,
+ And lo! from the sides of the sea the broken sound of the feast!
+ As, when in days of summer, through open windows, the fly
+ Swift as a breeze and loud as a trump goes by,
+ But when frosts in the field have pinched the wintering mouse,
+ Blindly noses and buzzes and hums in the firelit house:
+ So the sound of the feast gallantly trampled at night,
+ So it staggered and drooped, and droned in the morning light.
+
+
+IV
+
+THE RAID
+
+ It chanced that as Rua sat in the valley of silent falls
+ He heard a calling of doves from high on the cliffy walls.
+ Fire had fashioned of yore, and time had broken, the rocks;
+ There were rooting crannies for trees and nesting-places for flocks;
+ And he saw on the top of the cliffs, looking up from the pit of the
+ shade,
+ A flicker of wings and sunshine, and trees that swung in the trade.
+ "The trees swing in the trade," quoth Rua, doubtful of words,
+ "And the sun stares from the sky, but what should trouble the birds?"
+ Up from the shade he gazed, where high the parapet shone,
+ And he was aware of a ledge and of things that moved thereon.
+ "What manner of things are these? Are they spirits abroad by day?
+ Or the foes of my clan that are come, bringing death by a perilous way?"
+
+ The valley was gouged like a vessel, and round like the vessel's lip,
+ With a cape of the side of the hill thrust forth like the bows of a
+ ship.
+ On the top of the face of the cape a volley of sun struck fair,
+ And the cape overhung like a chin a gulf of sunless air.
+ "Silence, heart! What is that?--that, which flickered and shone,
+ Into the sun for an instant, and in an instant gone?
+ Was it a warrior's plume, a warrior's girdle of hair?
+ Swung in the loop of a rope, is he making a bridge of the air?"
+ Once and again Rua saw, in the trenchant edge of the sky,
+ The giddy conjuring done. And then, in the blink of an eye,
+ A scream caught in with the breath, a whirling packet of limbs,
+ A lump that dived in the gulf, more swift than a dolphin swims;
+ And there was a lump at his feet, and eyes were alive in the lump.
+ Sick was the soul of Rua, ambushed close in a clump;
+ Sick of soul he drew near, making his courage stout;
+ And he looked in the face of the thing, and the life of the thing went
+ out.
+ And he gazed on the tattooed limbs, and, behold, he knew the man:
+ Hoka, a chief of the Vais, the truculent foe of his clan:
+ Hoka a moment since that stepped in the loop of the rope,
+ Filled with the lust of war, and alive with courage and hope.
+
+ Again to the giddy cornice Rua lifted his eyes,
+ And again beheld men passing in the armpit of the skies.
+ "Foes of my race!" cried Rua, "the mouth of Rua is true:
+ Never a shark in the deep is nobler of soul than you.
+ There was never a nobler foray, never a bolder plan;
+ Never a dizzier path was trod by the children of man;
+ And Rua, your evil-doer through all the days of his years,
+ Counts it honour to hate you, honour to fall by your spears."
+ And Rua straightened his back. "O Vais, a scheme for a scheme!"
+ Cried Rua and turned and descended the turbulent stair of the stream,
+ Leaping from rock to rock as the water-wagtail at home
+ Flits through resonant valleys and skims by boulder and foam.
+ And Rua burst from the glen and leaped on the shore of the brook,
+ And straight for the roofs of the clan his vigorous way he took.
+ Swift were the heels of his flight, and loud behind as he went
+ Rattled the leaping stones on the line of his long descent.
+ And ever he thought as he ran, and caught at his gasping breath,
+ "O the fool of a Rua, Rua that runs to his death!
+ But the right is the right," thought Rua, and ran like the wind on the
+ foam,
+ "The right is the right for ever, and home for ever home.
+ For what though the oven smoke? And what though I die ere morn?
+ There was I nourished and tended, and there was Taheia born."
+
+ Noon was high on the High-place, the second noon of the feast;
+ And heat and shameful slumber weighed on people and priest;
+ And the heart drudged slow in bodies heavy with monstrous meals;
+ And the senseless limbs were scattered abroad like spokes of wheels;
+ And crapulous women sat and stared at the stones anigh
+ With a bestial droop of the lip and a swinish rheum in the eye.
+ As about the dome of the bees in the time for the drones to fall,
+ The dead and the maimed are scattered, and lie, and stagger, and crawl;
+ So on the grades of the terrace, in the ardent eye of the day,
+ The half-awake and the sleepers clustered and crawled and lay;
+ And loud as the dome of the bees, in the time of a swarming horde,
+ A horror of many insects hung in the air and roared.
+ Rua looked and wondered; he said to himself in his heart:
+ "Poor are the pleasures of life, and death is the better part."
+ But lo! on the higher benches a cluster of tranquil folk
+ Sat by themselves, nor raised their serious eyes, nor spoke:
+ Women with robes unruffled and garlands duly arranged,
+ Gazing far from the feast with faces of people estranged;
+ And quiet amongst the quiet, and fairer than all the fair,
+ Taheia, the well-descended, Taheia, heavy of hair.
+ And the soul of Rua awoke, courage enlightened his eyes
+ And he uttered a summoning shout and called on the clan to rise.
+ Over against him at once, in the spotted shade of the trees,
+ Owlish and blinking creatures scrambled to hands and knees;
+ On the grades of the sacred terrace, the driveller woke to fear,
+ And the hand of the ham-drooped warrior brandished a wavering spear.
+ And Rua folded his arms, and scorn discovered his teeth;
+ Above the war-crowd gibbered, and Rua stood smiling beneath.
+ Thick, like leaves in the autumn, faint, like April sleet,
+ Missiles from tremulous hands quivered around his feet;
+ And Taheia leaped from her place; and the priest, the ruby-eyed,
+ Ran to the front of the terrace, and brandished his arms and cried:
+ "Hold, O fools, he brings tidings!" and "Hold, 'tis the love of my
+ heart!"
+ Till lo! in front of the terrace, Rua pierced with a dart.
+
+ Taheia cherished his head, and the aged priest stood by,
+ And gazed with eyes of ruby at Rua's darkening eye.
+ "Taheia, here is the end, I die a death for a man.
+ I have given the life of my soul to save an unsavable clan.
+ See them, the drooping of hams! behold me the blinking crew;
+ Fifty spears they cast, and one of fifty true!
+ And you, O priest, the foreteller, foretell for yourself if you can,
+ Foretell the hour of the day when the Vais shall burst on your clan!
+ By the head of the tapu cleft, with death and fire in their hand,
+ Thick and silent like ants, the warriors swarm in the land."
+
+ And they tell that when next the sun had climbed to the noonday skies,
+ It shone on the smoke of feasting in the country of the Vais.
+
+
+
+
+TICONDEROGA
+
+A LEGEND OF THE WEST HIGHLANDS
+
+
+TICONDEROGA
+
+ This is the tale of the man
+ Who heard a word in the night
+ In the land of the heathery hills,
+ In the days of the feud and the fight.
+ By the sides of the rainy sea,
+ Where never a stranger came,
+ On the awful lips of the dead,
+ He heard the outlandish name.
+ It sang in his sleeping ears,
+ It hummed in his waking head:
+ The name--Ticonderoga,
+ The utterance of the dead.
+
+
+I
+
+THE SAYING OF THE NAME
+
+ On the loch-sides of Appin,
+ When the mist blew from the sea,
+ A Stewart stood with a Cameron:
+ An angry man was he.
+ The blood beat in his ears,
+ The blood ran hot to his head,
+ The mist blew from the sea,
+ And there was the Cameron dead.
+ "O, what have I done to my friend,
+ O, what have I done to mysel',
+ That he should be cold and dead,
+ And I in the danger of all?
+
+ "Nothing but danger about me,
+ Danger behind and before,
+ Death at wait in the heather
+ In Appin and Mamore,
+ Hate at all of the ferries,
+ And death at each of the fords,
+ Camerons priming gun-locks
+ And Camerons sharpening swords."
+
+ But this was a man of counsel,
+ This was a man of a score,
+ There dwelt no pawkier Stewart
+ In Appin or Mamore.
+ He looked on the blowing mist,
+ He looked on the awful dead,
+ And there came a smile on his face
+ And there slipped a thought in his head.
+
+ Out over cairn and moss,
+ Out over scrog and scaur,
+ He ran as runs the clansman
+ That bears the cross of war.
+ His heart beat in his body,
+ His hair clove to his face,
+ When he came at last in the gloaming
+ To the dead man's brother's place.
+ The east was white with the moon,
+ The west with the sun was red,
+ And there, in the house-doorway,
+ Stood the brother of the dead.
+
+ "I have slain a man to my danger,
+ I have slain a man to my death.
+ I put my soul in your hands,"
+ The panting Stewart saith.
+ "I lay it bare in your hands,
+ For I know your hands are leal;
+ And be you my targe and bulwark
+ From the bullet and the steel."
+
+ Then up and spoke the Cameron,
+ And gave him his hand again:
+ "There shall never a man in Scotland
+ Set faith in me in vain;
+ And whatever man you have slaughtered,
+ Of whatever name or line,
+ By my sword and yonder mountain,
+ I make your quarrel mine.[1]
+ I bid you in to my fireside,
+ I share with you house and hall;
+ It stands upon my honour
+ To see you safe from all."
+
+ It fell in the time of midnight,
+ When the fox barked in the den,
+ And the plaids were over the faces
+ In all the houses of men,
+ That as the living Cameron
+ Lay sleepless on his bed,
+ Out of the night and the other world,
+ Came in to him the dead.
+
+ "My blood is on the heather,
+ My bones are on the hill;
+ There is joy in the home of ravens
+ That the young shall eat their fill.
+ My blood is poured in the dust,
+ My soul is spilled in the air;
+ And the man that has undone me
+ Sleeps in my brother's care."
+ "I'm wae for your death, my brother,
+ But if all of my house were dead,
+ I couldna withdraw the plighted hand,
+ Nor break the word once said."
+
+ "O, what shall I say to our father,
+ In the place to which I fare?
+ O, what shall I say to our mother,
+ Who greets to see me there?
+ And to all the kindly Camerons
+ That have lived and died long-syne--
+ Is this the word you send them,
+ Fause-hearted brother mine?"
+
+ "It's neither fear nor duty,
+ It's neither quick nor dead,
+ Shall gar me withdraw the plighted hand,
+ Or break the word once said."
+
+ Thrice in the time of midnight,
+ When the fox barked in the den,
+ And the plaids were over the faces
+ In all the houses of men,
+ Thrice as the living Cameron
+ Lay sleepless on his bed,
+ Out of the night and the other world
+ Came in to him the dead,
+ And cried to him for vengeance
+ On the man that laid him low;
+ And thrice the living Cameron
+ Told the dead Cameron, no.
+
+ "Thrice have you seen me, brother,
+ But now shall see me no more,
+ Till you meet your angry fathers
+ Upon the farther shore.
+ Thrice have I spoken, and now,
+ Before the cock be heard,
+ I take my leave for ever
+ With the naming of a word.
+ It shall sing in your sleeping ears,
+ It shall hum in your waking head,
+ The name--Ticonderoga,
+ And the warning of the dead."
+
+ Now when the night was over
+ And the time of people's fears,
+ The Cameron walked abroad,
+ And the word was in his ears.
+ "Many a name I know,
+ But never a name like this;
+ O, where shall I find a skilly man
+ Shall tell me what it is?"
+ With many a man he counselled
+ Of high and low degree,
+ With the herdsman on the mountains
+ And the fishers of the sea.
+ And he came and went unweary,
+ And read the books of yore,
+ And the runes that were written of old
+ On stones upon the moor.
+ And many a name he was told,
+ But never the name of his fears--
+ Never, in east or west,
+ The name that rang in his ears:
+ Names of men and of clans;
+ Names for the grass and the tree,
+ For the smallest tarn in the mountains,
+ The smallest reef in the sea:
+ Names for the high and low,
+ The names of the craig and the flat;
+ But in all the land of Scotland,
+ Never a name like that.
+
+
+II
+
+THE SEEKING OF THE NAME
+
+ And now there was speech in the south,
+ And a man of the south that was wise,
+ A periwig'd lord of London,[2]
+ Called on the clans to rise.
+ And the riders rode, and the summons
+ Came to the western shore,
+ To the land of the sea and the heather,
+ To Appin and Mamore.
+ It called on all to gather
+ From every scrog and scaur,
+ That loved their fathers' tartan
+ And the ancient game of war.
+ And down the watery valley
+ And up the windy hill,
+ Once more, as in the olden,
+ The pipes were sounding shrill;
+ Again in Highland sunshine
+ The naked steel was bright;
+ And the lads, once more in tartan,
+ Went forth again to fight.
+
+ "O, why should I dwell here
+ With a weird upon my life,
+ When the clansmen shout for battle
+ And the war-swords clash in strife?
+ I canna joy at feast,
+ I canna sleep in bed,
+ For the wonder of the word
+ And the warning of the dead.
+ It sings in my sleeping ears,
+ It hums in my waking head,
+ The name--Ticonderoga,
+ The utterance of the dead.
+ Then up, and with the fighting men
+ To march away from here,
+ Till the cry of the great war-pipe
+ Shall drown it in my ear!"
+
+ Where flew King George's ensign
+ The plaided soldiers went:
+ They drew the sword in Germany,
+ In Flanders pitched the tent.
+ The bells of foreign cities
+ Rang far across the plain:
+ They passed the happy Rhine,
+ They drank the rapid Main.
+ Through Asiatic jungles
+ The Tartans filed their way,
+ And the neighing of the war-pipes
+ Struck terror in Cathay.[3]
+
+ "Many a name have I heard," he thought,
+ "In all the tongues of men,
+ Full many a name both here and there,
+ Full many both now and then.
+ When I was at home in my father's house,
+ In the land of the naked knee,
+ Between the eagles that fly in the lift
+ And the herrings that swim in the sea,
+ And now that I am a captain-man
+ With a braw cockade in my hat--
+ Many a name have I heard," he thought,
+ "But never a name like that."
+
+
+III
+
+THE PLACE OF THE NAME
+
+ There fell a war in a woody place,
+ Lay far across the sea,
+ A war of the march in the mirk midnight
+ And the shot from behind the tree,
+ The shaven head and the painted face,
+ The silent foot in the wood,
+ In the land of a strange, outlandish tongue
+ That was hard to be understood.
+
+ It fell about the gloaming,
+ The general stood with his staff,
+ He stood and he looked east and west
+ With little mind to laugh.
+ "Far have I been, and much have I seen,
+ And kennt both gain and loss,
+ But here we have woods on every hand
+ And a kittle water to cross.
+ Far have I been, and much have I seen,
+ But never the beat of this;
+ And there's one must go down to that water-side
+ To see how deep it is."
+
+ It fell in the dusk of the night
+ When unco things betide,
+ The skilly captain, the Cameron,
+ Went down to that waterside.
+ Canny and soft the captain went;
+ And a man of the woody land,
+ With the shaven head and the painted face,
+ Went down at his right hand.
+ It fell in the quiet night,
+ There was never a sound to ken;
+ But all of the woods to the right and the left
+ Lay filled with the painted men.
+
+ "Far have I been, and much have I seen,
+ Both as a man and boy,
+ But never have I set forth a foot,
+ On so perilous an employ."
+ It fell in the dusk of the night
+ When unco things betide,
+ That he was aware of a captain-man
+ Drew near to the water-side.
+ He was aware of his coming
+ Down in the gloaming alone;
+ And he looked in the face of the man,
+ And lo! the face was his own.
+ "This is my weird," he said,
+ "And now I ken the worst;
+ For many shall fall the morn,
+ But I shall fall with the first.
+ O, you of the outland tongue,
+ You of the painted face,
+ This is the place of my death;
+ Can you tell me the name of the place?"
+
+ "Since the Frenchmen have been here
+ They have called it Sault-Marie;
+ But that is a name for priests,
+ And not for you and me.
+ It went by another word,"
+ Quoth he of the shaven head:
+ "It was called Ticonderoga
+ In the days of the great dead."
+ And it fell on the morrow's morning,
+ In the fiercest of the fight,
+ That the Cameron bit the dust
+ As he foretold at night;
+ And far from the hills of heather,
+ Far from the isles of the sea,
+ He sleeps in the place of the name
+ As it was doomed to be.
+
+
+
+
+HEATHER ALE
+
+A GALLOWAY LEGEND
+
+
+HEATHER ALE
+
+ From the bonny bells of heather
+ They brewed a drink long-syne,
+ Was sweeter far than honey,
+ Was stronger far than wine.
+ They brewed it and they drank it,
+ And lay in a blessed swound
+ For days and days together
+ In their dwellings underground.
+
+ There rose a king in Scotland,
+ A fell man to his foes,
+ He smote the Picts in battle,
+ He hunted them like roes.
+ Over miles of the red mountain
+ He hunted as they fled,
+ And strewed the dwarfish bodies
+ Of the dying and the dead.
+
+ Summer came in the country,
+ Red was the heather bell;
+ But the manner of the brewing
+ Was none alive to tell.
+ In the graves that were like children's
+ On many a mountain head,
+ The Brewsters of the Heather
+ Lay numbered with the dead.
+
+ The king in the red moorland
+ Rode on a summer's day;
+ And the bees hummed, and the curlews
+ Cried beside the way.
+ The king rode, and was angry,
+ Black was his brow and pale,
+ To rule in a land of heather
+ And lack the Heather Ale.
+
+ It fortuned that his vassals,
+ Riding free on the heath,
+ Came on a stone that was fallen
+ And vermin hid beneath.
+ Rudely plucked from their hiding,
+ Never a word they spoke:
+ A son and his aged father--
+ Last of the dwarfish folk.
+
+ The king sat high on his charger,
+ He looked on the little men;
+ And the dwarfish and swarthy couple
+ Looked at the king again.
+ Down by the shore he had them;
+ And there on the giddy brink--
+ "I will give you life, ye vermin,
+ For the secret of the drink."
+
+ There stood the son and father;
+ And they looked high and low;
+ The heather was red around them,
+ The sea rumbled below.
+ And up and spoke the father,
+ Shrill was his voice to hear:
+ "I have a word in private,
+ A word for the royal ear.
+
+ "Life is dear to the aged,
+ And honour a little thing;
+ I would gladly sell the secret,"
+ Quoth the Pict to the king.
+ His voice was small as a sparrow's,
+ And shrill and wonderful clear;
+ "I would gladly sell my secret,
+ Only my son I fear.
+
+ "For life is a little matter,
+ And death is nought to the young;
+ And I dare not sell my honour
+ Under the eye of my son.
+ Take _him_, O king, and bind him,
+ And cast him far in the deep:
+ And it's I will tell the secret,
+ That I have sworn to keep."
+
+ They took the son and bound him,
+ Neck and heels in a thong,
+ And a lad took him and swung him,
+ And flung him far and strong,
+ And the sea swallowed his body,
+ Like that of a child of ten;--
+ And there on the cliff stood the father,
+ Last of the dwarfish men.
+
+ "True was the word I told you:
+ Only my son I feared;
+ For I doubt the sapling courage
+ That goes without the beard.
+ But now in vain is the torture,
+ Fire shall never avail;
+ Here dies in my bosom
+ The secret of Heather Ale."
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS AT SEA
+
+
+CHRISTMAS AT SEA
+
+ The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
+ The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand;
+ The wind was a nor'-wester, blowing squally off the sea;
+ And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.
+
+ They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
+ But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
+ We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
+ And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go about.
+
+ All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
+ All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;
+ All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
+ For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.
+
+ We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;
+ But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:
+ So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,
+ And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.
+
+ The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
+ The good red fires were burning bright in every 'long-shore home;
+ The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;
+ And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.
+
+ The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;
+ For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)
+ This day of our adversity was blessèd Christmas morn,
+ And the house above the coastguard's was the house where I was born.
+
+ O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
+ My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;
+ And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
+ Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves.
+
+ And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
+ Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;
+ And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
+ To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessèd Christmas Day.
+
+ They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
+ "All hands to loose topgallant sails," I heard the captain call.
+ "By the Lord, she'll never stand it," our first mate, Jackson, cried.
+ ... "It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson," he replied.
+
+ She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,
+ And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood,
+ As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,
+ We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.
+
+ And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,
+ As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
+ But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
+ Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES TO THE SONG OF RAHÉRO
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.--This tale, of which I have not consciously changed a
+single feature, I received from tradition. It is highly popular through
+all the country of the eight Tevas, the clan to which Rahéro belonged;
+and particularly in Taiárapu, the windward peninsula of Tahiti, where he
+lived. I have heard from end to end two versions; and as many as five
+different persons have helped me with details. There seems no reason why
+the tale should not be true.
+
+Note 1, page 140. "_The aito_", _quasi_ champion, or brave. One skilled
+in the use of some weapon, who wandered the country challenging
+distinguished rivals and taking part in local quarrels. It was in the
+natural course of his advancement to be at last employed by a chief, or
+king; and it would then be a part of his duties to purvey the victim for
+sacrifice. One of the doomed families was indicated; the aito took his
+weapon and went forth alone; a little behind him bearers followed with
+the sacrificial basket. Sometimes the victim showed fight, sometimes
+prevailed; more often, without doubt, he fell. But whatever body was
+found, the bearers indifferently took up.
+
+Note 2, page 141. "_Pai_", "_Honoura_", and "_Ahupu_". Legendary persons
+of Tahiti, all natives of Taiárapu. Of the first two I have collected
+singular although imperfect legends, which I hope soon to lay before the
+public in another place. Of Ahupu, except in snatches of song, little
+memory appears to linger. She dwelt at least about Tepari,--"the
+sea-cliffs,"--the eastern fastness of the isle; walked by paths known
+only to herself upon the mountains; was courted by dangerous suitors who
+came swimming from adjacent islands, and defended and rescued (as I
+gather) by the loyalty of native fish. My anxiety to learn more of
+"Ahupu Vehine" became (during my stay in Taiárapu) a cause of some
+diversion to that mirthful people, the inhabitants.
+
+Note 3, page 142. "_Covered an oven._" The cooking fire is made in a
+hole in the ground, and is then buried.
+
+Note 4, page 143. "_Flies._" This is perhaps an anachronism. Even
+speaking of to-day in Tahiti, the phrase would have to be understood as
+referring mainly to mosquitoes, and these only in watered valleys with
+close woods, such as I suppose to form the surroundings of Rahéro's
+homestead. A quarter of a mile away, where the air moves freely, you
+shall look in vain for one.
+
+Note 5, page 144. "_Hook_" of mother-of-pearl. Bright-hook fishing, and
+that with the spear, appear to be the favourite native methods.
+
+Note 6, page 145. "_Leaves_," the plates of Tahiti.
+
+Note 7, page 146. "_Yottowas_," so spelt for convenience of
+pronunciation, _quasi_ Tacksmen in the Scottish Highlands. The
+organisation of eight sub-districts and eight yottowas to a division,
+which was in use (until yesterday) among the Tevas, I have attributed
+without authority to the next clan (see page 155).
+
+Note 8, page 146. "_Omare_," pronounce as a dactyl. A loaded
+quarterstaff, one of the two favourite weapons of the Tahitian brave;
+the javelin, or casting spear, was the other.
+
+Note 9, page 148. "_The ribbon of light._" Still to be seen (and heard)
+spinning from one marae to another on Tahiti; or so I have it upon
+evidence that would rejoice the Psychical Society.
+
+Note 10, page 149. "_Námunu-úra._" The complete name is Námunu-úra te
+aropa. Why it should be pronounced Námunu, dactylically, I cannot see,
+but so I have always heard it. This was the clan immediately beyond the
+Tevas on the south coast of the island. At the date of the tale the clan
+organisation must have been very weak. There is no particular mention of
+Támatéa's mother going to Pápara, to the head chief of her own clan,
+which would appear her natural recourse. On the other hand, she seems to
+have visited various lesser chiefs among the Tevas, and these to have
+excused themselves solely on the danger of the enterprise. The broad
+distinction here drawn between Nateva and Námunu-úra is therefore not
+impossibly anachronistic.
+
+Note 11, page 149. "_Hiopa the king._" Hiopa was really the name of the
+king (chief) of Vaiau; but I could never learn that of the king of
+Paea--pronounce to rhyme with the Indian _ayah_--and I gave the name
+where it was most needed. This note must appear otiose indeed to readers
+who have never heard of either of these two gentlemen; and perhaps there
+is only one person in the world capable at once of reading my verses and
+spying the inaccuracy. For him, for Mr. Tati Salmon, hereditary high
+chief of the Tevas, the note is solely written: a small attention from a
+clansman to his chief.
+
+Note 12, page 150. "_Let the pigs be tapu._" It is impossible to explain
+_tapu_ in a note; we have it as an English word, taboo. Suffice it, that
+a thing which was _tapu_ must not be touched, nor a place that was
+_tapu_ visited.
+
+Note 13, page 155. "_Fish, the food of desire._" There is a special word
+in the Tahitian language to signify _hungering after fish_. I may remark
+that here is one of my chief difficulties about the whole story. How did
+king, commons, women, and all come to eat together at this feast? But
+it troubled none of my numerous authorities; so there must certainly be
+some natural explanation.
+
+Note 14, page 160. "_The mustering word of the clan._"
+
+ _Teva te ua,
+ Teva te matai!_
+
+ Teva the wind,
+ Teva the rain!
+
+Notes 15 and 16, page 165. "_The star of the dead._" Venus as a morning
+star. I have collected much curious evidence as to this belief. The dead
+retain their taste for a fish diet, enter into copartnery with living
+fishers, and haunt the reef and the lagoon. The conclusion attributed to
+the nameless lady of the legend would be reached to-day, under the like
+circumstances, by ninety per cent. of Polynesians: and here I probably
+under-state by one-tenth.
+
+
+NOTES TO THE FEAST OF FAMINE
+
+In this ballad I have strung together some of the more striking
+particularities of the Marquesas. It rests upon no authority; it is in
+no sense, like "Rahéro," a native story; but a patchwork of details of
+manners and the impressions of a traveller. It may seem strange, when
+the scene is laid upon these profligate islands, to make the story hinge
+on love. But love is not less known in the Marquesas than elsewhere; nor
+is there any cause of suicide more common in the islands.
+
+Note 1, page 169. "_Pit of popoi._" Where the bread-fruit was stored for
+preservation.
+
+Note 2, page 169. "_Ruby-red._" The priest's eyes were probably red from
+the abuse of kava. His beard (_ib._) is said to be worth an estate; for
+the beards of old men are the favourite head-adornment of the
+Marquesans, as the hair of women formed their most costly girdle. The
+former, among this generally beardless and short-lived people, fetch
+to-day considerable sums.
+
+Note 3, page 169. "_Tikis._" The tiki is an ugly image hewn out of wood
+or stone.
+
+Note 4, page 172. "_The one-stringed harp._" Usually employed for
+serenades.
+
+Note 5, page 173. "_The sacred cabin of palm._" Which, however, no woman
+could approach. I do not know where women were tattooed; probably in the
+common house, or in the bush, for a woman was a creature of small
+account. I must guard the reader against supposing Taheia was at all
+disfigured; the art of the Marquesan tattooer is extreme; and she would
+appear to be clothed in a web of lace, inimitably delicate, exquisite in
+pattern, and of a bluish hue that at once contrasts and harmonises with
+the warm pigment of the native skin. It would be hard to find a woman
+more becomingly adorned than "a well-tattooed" Marquesan.
+
+Note 6, page 175. "_The horror of night._" The Polynesian fear of ghosts
+and of the dark has been already referred to. Their life is beleaguered
+by the dead.
+
+Note 7, page 176. "_The quiet passage of souls._" So, I am told, the
+natives explain the sound of a little wind passing overhead unfelt.
+
+Note 8, page 178. "_The first of the victims fell._" Without doubt, this
+whole scene is untrue to fact. The victims were disposed of privately
+and some time before. And indeed I am far from claiming the credit of
+any high degree of accuracy for this ballad. Even in the time of famine,
+it is probable that Marquesan life went far more gaily than is here
+represented. But the melancholy of to-day lies on the writer's mind.
+
+
+NOTES TO TICONDEROGA
+
+INTRODUCTION.--I first heard this legend of my own country from that
+friend of men of letters, Mr. Alfred Nutt, "there in roaring London's
+central stream," and since the ballad first saw the light of day in
+_Scribner's Magazine_, Mr. Nutt and Lord Archibald Campbell have been in
+public controversy on the facts. Two clans, the Camerons and the
+Campbells, lay claim to this bracing story; and they do well: the man
+who preferred his plighted troth to the commands and menaces of the dead
+is an ancestor worth disputing. But the Campbells must rest content:
+they have the broad lands and the broad page of history; this appanage
+must be denied them; for between the name of _Cameron_ and that of
+_Campbell_ the muse will never hesitate.
+
+Note 1, page 191. Mr. Nutt reminds me it was "by my sword and Ben
+Cruachan" the Cameron swore.
+
+Note 2, page 194. "_A periwig'd lord of London._" The first Pitt.
+
+Note 3, page 195. "_Cathay._" There must be some omission in General
+Stewart's charming "History of the Highland Regiments," a book that
+might well be republished and continued; or it scarce appears how our
+friend could have got to China.
+
+
+NOTE TO HEATHER ALE
+
+Among the curiosities of human nature this legend claims a high place.
+It is needless to remind the reader that the Picts were never
+exterminated, and form to this day a large proportion of the folk of
+Scotland, occupying the eastern and the central parts, from the Firth of
+Forth, or perhaps the Lammermoors, upon the south, to the Ord of
+Caithness on the north. That the blundering guess of a dull chronicler
+should have inspired men with imaginary loathing for their own ancestors
+is already strange; that it should have begotten this wild legend seems
+incredible. Is it possible the chronicler's error was merely nominal?
+that what he told, and what the people proved themselves so ready to
+receive, about the Picts, was true or partly true of some anterior and
+perhaps Lappish savages, small of stature, black of hue, dwelling
+underground--possibly also the distillers of some forgotten spirit? See
+Mr. Campbell's "Tales of the West Highlands."
+
+
+
+
+SONGS OF TRAVEL
+
+AND OTHER VERSES
+
+
+SONGS OF TRAVEL
+
+
+I
+
+THE VAGABOND
+
+(TO AN AIR OF SCHUBERT)
+
+ 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.
+
+
+II
+
+YOUTH AND LOVE--I
+
+ Once only by the garden gate
+ Our lips were 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.
+
+
+III
+
+YOUTH AND LOVE--II
+
+ 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.
+
+
+IV
+
+ 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.
+
+
+V
+
+ 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?
+
+
+VI
+
+ 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.
+
+
+VII
+
+ 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.
+
+
+VIII
+
+ 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.
+
+
+IX
+
+ 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!
+
+
+X
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XI
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XII
+
+WE HAVE LOVED OF YORE
+
+(TO AN AIR OF DIABELLI)
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XIII
+
+MATER TRIUMPHANS
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XIV
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XV
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XVI
+
+(TO THE TUNE OF WANDERING WILLIE)
+
+ 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 moor-fowl,
+ 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.
+
+
+XVII
+
+WINTER
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XVIII
+
+ 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!"
+
+
+XIX
+
+TO DR. HAKE
+
+(ON RECEIVING A COPY OF VERSES)
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XX
+
+TO ----
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XXI
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XXII
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XXIII
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XXIV
+
+ 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!
+
+
+XXV
+
+IF THIS WERE FAITH
+
+ 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?
+
+
+XXVI
+
+MY WIFE
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XXVII
+
+TO THE MUSE
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+TO AN ISLAND PRINCESS
+
+ 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 I 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.[1]
+
+ TANTIRA, TAHITI, _Nov. 5, 1888_.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+ [1] 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."
+
+
+XXIX
+
+TO KALAKAUA
+
+(WITH A PRESENT OF A PEARL)
+
+ The Silver Ship, my King--that was her name
+ In the bright islands whence your fathers came[1]--
+ 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_.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+ [1] The yacht _Casco_ had been so called by the people of Fakarava in
+ Tahiti.
+
+
+XXX
+
+TO PRINCESS KAIULANI
+
+[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.
+
+
+XXXI
+
+TO MOTHER MARYANNE
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XXXII
+
+IN MEMORIAM E.H.
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+TO MY WIFE
+
+(A FRAGMENT)
+
+ Long must elapse ere you behold again
+ Green forest frame the entry of the lane--
+ The wild lane with the bramble and the briar,
+ 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 silvan 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_.
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+TO MY OLD FAMILIARS
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XXXV
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+TO S. C.
+
+ 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.
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+THE HOUSE OF TEMBINOKA
+
+[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.
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+THE WOODMAN
+
+ 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
+ Briar 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 silvan 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.
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+TROPIC RAIN
+
+ As the single pang of the blow, when the metal is mingled well,
+ Rings and lives and resounds in all the bounds of the bell,
+ So the thunder above spoke with a single tongue,
+ So in the heart of the mountain the sound of it rumbled and clung.
+
+ Sudden the thunder was drowned--quenched was the levin light--
+ And the angel-spirit of rain laughed out loud in the night.
+ Loud as the maddened river raves in the cloven glen,
+ Angel of rain! you laughed and leaped on the roofs of men;
+
+ And the sleepers sprang in their beds, and joyed and feared as you fell.
+ You struck, and my cabin quailed; the roof of it roared like a bell.
+ You spoke, and at once the mountain shouted and shook with brooks.
+ You ceased, and the day returned, rosy, with virgin looks.
+
+ And methought that beauty and terror are only one, not two;
+ And the world has room for love, and death, and thunder, and dew;
+ And all the sinews of hell slumber in summer air;
+ And the face of God is a rock, but the face of the rock is fair.
+ Beneficent streams of tears flow at the finger of pain;
+ And out of the cloud that smites, beneficent rivers of rain.
+
+ VAILIMA.
+
+
+XL
+
+AN END OF TRAVEL
+
+ Let now your soul in this substantial world
+ Some anchor strike. Be here the body moored;--
+ This spectacle immutably from now
+ The picture in your eye; and when time strikes,
+ And the green scene goes on the instant blind--
+ The ultimate helpers, where your horse to-day
+ Conveyed you dreaming, bear your body dead.
+
+ VAILIMA.
+
+
+XLI
+
+ We uncommiserate pass into the night
+ From the loud banquet, and departing leave
+ A tremor in men's memories, faint and sweet
+ And frail as music. Features of our face,
+ The tones of the voice, the touch of the loved hand,
+ Perish and vanish, one by one, from earth:
+ Meanwhile, in the hall of song, the multitude
+ Applauds the new performer. One, perchance,
+ One ultimate survivor lingers on,
+ And smiles, and to his ancient heart recalls
+ The long forgotten. Ere the morrow die,
+ He too, returning, through the curtain comes,
+ And the new age forgets us and goes on.
+
+
+XLII
+
+ Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
+ Say, could that lad be I?
+ Merry of soul he sailed on a day
+ Over the sea to Skye.
+
+ Mull was astern, Rum on the port,
+ Eigg on the starboard bow;
+ Glory of youth glowed in his soul:
+ Where is that glory now?
+
+ Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
+ Say, could that lad be I?
+ Merry of soul he sailed on a day
+ Over the sea to Skye.
+
+ Give me again all that was there,
+ Give me the sun that shone!
+ Give me the eyes, give me the soul,
+ Give me the lad that's gone!
+
+ Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
+ Say, could that lad be I?
+ Merry of soul he sailed on a day
+ Over the sea to Skye.
+
+ Billow and breeze, islands and seas,
+ Mountains of rain and sun,
+ All that was good, all that was fair,
+ All that was me is gone.
+
+
+XLIII
+
+TO S.R. CROCKETT
+
+(ON RECEIVING A DEDICATION)
+
+ Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
+ Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
+ Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
+ My heart remembers how!
+
+ Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,
+ Standing-stones on the vacant wine-red moor,
+ Hills of sheep, and the homes of the silent vanished races,
+ And winds, austere and pure:
+
+ Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
+ Hills of home! and to hear again the call;
+ Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying,
+ And hear no more at all.
+
+ VAILIMA.
+
+
+XLIV
+
+EVENSONG
+
+ The embers of the day are red
+ Beyond the murky hill.
+ The kitchen smokes: the bed
+ In the darkling house is spread:
+ The great sky darkens overhead,
+ And the great woods are shrill.
+ So far have I been led,
+ Lord, by Thy will:
+ So far I have followed, Lord, and wondered still.
+
+ The breeze from the embalmèd land
+ Blows sudden toward the shore,
+ And claps my cottage door.
+ I hear the signal, Lord--I understand.
+ The night at Thy command
+ Comes. I will eat and sleep and will not question more.
+
+ VAILIMA.
+
+
+
+
+ADDITIONAL POEMS
+
+
+ADDITIONAL POEMS
+
+
+A FAMILIAR EPISTLE
+
+ Blame me not that this epistle
+ Is the first you have from me;
+ Idleness hath held me fettered;
+ But at last the times are bettered,
+ And once more I wet my whistle
+ Here in France beside the sea.
+
+ All the green and idle weather,
+ I have had in sun and shower
+ Such an easy, warm subsistence,
+ Such an indolent existence,
+ I should find it hard to sever
+ Day from day and hour from hour.
+
+ Many a tract-provided ranter
+ May upbraid me, dark and sour,
+ Many a bland Utilitarian,
+ Or excited Millenarian,
+ --"_Pereunt et imputantur_"--
+ You must speak to every hour.
+
+ But (the very term's deception)
+ You at least, my Friend, will see
+ That in sunny grassy meadows,
+ Trailed across by moving shadows,
+ To be actively receptive
+ Is as much as man can be.
+
+ He that all the winter grapples
+ Difficulties--thrust and ward--
+ Needs to cheer him thro' his duty
+ Memories of sun and beauty,
+ Orchards with the russet apples
+ Lying scattered on the sward.
+
+ Many such I keep in prison,
+ Keep them here at heart unseen,
+ Till my muse again rehearses
+ Long years hence, and in my verses
+ You shall meet them re-arisen,
+ Ever comely, ever green.
+
+ You know how they never perish,
+ How, in time of later art,
+ Memories consecrate and sweeten
+ Those defaced and tempest-beaten
+ Flowers of former years we cherish
+ Half a life, against our heart.
+
+ Most, those love-fruits withered greenly,
+ Those frail, sickly amourettes,--
+ How they brighten with the distance,
+ Take new strength and new existence,
+ Till we see them sitting queenly
+ Crowned and courted by regrets!
+
+ All that loveliest and best is,
+ Aureole-fashion round their head,
+ They that looked in life but plainly,
+ How they stir our spirits vainly
+ When they come to us, Alcestis--
+ Like returning from the dead!
+
+ Not the old love but another,
+ Bright she comes at memory's call,
+ Our forgotten vows reviving
+ To a newer, livelier living,
+ As the dead child to the mother
+ Seems the fairest child of all.
+
+ Thus our Goethe, sacred master,
+ Travelling backward thro' his youth,
+ Surely wandered wrong in trying
+ To renew the old, undying
+ Loves that cling in memory faster
+ Than they ever lived in truth.
+
+ BOULOGNE-SUR-MER, _September 1872_.
+
+
+II
+
+RONDELS
+
+ 1
+
+ Far have you come, my lady, from the town,
+ And far from all your sorrows, if you please,
+ To smell the good sea-winds and hear the seas,
+ And in green meadows lay your body down.
+
+ To find your pale face grow from pale to brown,
+ Your sad eyes growing brighter by degrees;
+ Far have you come, my lady, from the town,
+ And far from all your sorrows, if you please.
+
+ Here in this seaboard land of old renown,
+ In meadow grass go wading to the knees;
+ Bathe your whole soul a while in simple ease;
+ There is no sorrow but the sea can drown;
+ Far have you come, my lady, from the town.
+
+ 2
+
+ _Nous n'irons plus au bois_
+ We'll walk the woods no more,
+ But stay beside the fire,
+ To weep for old desire
+ And things that are no more.
+
+ The woods are spoiled and hoar,
+ The ways are full of mire;
+ We'll walk the woods no more,
+ But stay beside the fire.
+ We loved, in days of yore,
+ Love, laughter, and the lyre.
+ Ah God, but death is dire,
+ And death is at the door--
+ We'll walk the woods no more.
+
+ CHÂTEAU RENARD, _August 1875_.
+
+ 3
+
+ Since I am sworn to live my life
+ And not to keep an easy heart,
+ Some men may sit and drink apart,
+ I bear a banner in the strife.
+
+ Some can take quiet thought to wife,
+ I am all day at _tierce_ and _carte_,
+ Since I am sworn to live my life
+ And not to keep an easy heart.
+
+ I follow gaily to the fife,
+ Leave Wisdom bowed above a chart,
+ And Prudence brawing in the mart,
+ And dare Misfortune to the knife,
+ Since I am sworn to live my life.
+
+ 4
+
+ OF HIS PITIABLE TRANSFORMATION
+
+ I who was young so long,
+ Young and alert and gay,
+ Now that my hair is grey,
+ Begin to change my song.
+
+ Now I know right from wrong,
+ Now I know _pay_ and _pray_,
+ I who was young so long,
+ Young and alert and gay.
+
+ Now I follow the throng,
+ Walk in the beaten way,
+ Hear what the elders say,
+ And own that I was wrong--
+ I who was young so long.
+
+ 1876.
+
+
+III
+
+EPISTLE TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+ Noo lyart leaves blaw ower the green,
+ Red are the bonny woods o' Dean,
+ An' here we're back in Embro, freen',
+ To pass the winter.
+ Whilk noo, wi' frosts afore, draws in,
+ An' snaws ahint her.
+
+ I've seen 's hae days to fricht us a',
+ The Pentlands poothered weel wi' snaw,
+ The ways half-smoored wi' liquid thaw,
+ An' half-congealin',
+ The snell an' scowtherin' norther blaw
+ Frae blae Brunteelan'.
+
+ I've seen 's been unco sweir to sally,
+ And at the door-cheeks daff an' dally,
+ Seen 's daidle thus an' shilly-shally
+ For near a minute--
+ Sae cauld the wind blew up the valley,
+ The deil was in it!--
+
+ Syne spread the silk an' tak the gate,
+ In blast an' blaudin', rain, deil hae 't!
+ The hale toon glintin', stane an' slate,
+ Wi' cauld an' weet,
+ An' to the Court, gin we 'se be late,
+ Bicker oor feet.
+
+ And at the Court, tae, aft I saw
+ Whaur Advocates by twa an' twa
+ Gang gesterin' end to end the ha'
+ In weeg an' goon,
+ To crack o' what ye wull but Law
+ The hale forenoon.
+
+ That muckle ha', maist like a kirk,
+ I've kent at braid mid-day sae mirk
+ Ye'd seen white weegs an' faces lurk
+ Like ghaists frae Hell,
+ But whether Christian ghaists or Turk,
+ Deil ane could tell.
+
+ The three fires lunted in the gloom,
+ The wind blew like the blast o' doom,
+ The rain upo' the roof abune
+ Played Peter Dick--
+ Ye wad nae'd licht enough i' the room
+ Your teeth to pick!
+
+ But, freend, ye ken how me an' you,
+ The ling-lang lanely winter through,
+ Keep'd a guid speerit up, an' true
+ To lore Horatian,
+ 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.
+
+ EDINBURGH, _October 1875_.
+
+
+IV
+
+THE SUSQUEHANNAH AND THE DELAWARE
+
+ Of where or how, I nothing know;
+ And why, I do not care;
+ Enough if, even so,
+ My travelling eyes, my travelling mind can go
+ By flood and field and hill, by wood and meadow fair,
+ Beside the Susquehannah and along the Delaware.
+
+ I think, I hope, I dream no more
+ The dreams of otherwhere,
+ The cherished thoughts of yore;
+ I have been changed from what I was before;
+ And drunk too deep perchance the lotus of the air,
+ Beside the Susquehannah 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 Susquehannah and along the Delaware.
+
+ _August 1879._
+
+
+V
+
+EPISTLE TO ALBERT DEW-SMITH
+
+ Figure me to yourself, I pray--
+ A man of my peculiar cut--
+ Apart from dancing and deray,[1]
+ Into an Alpine valley shut;
+
+ Shut in a kind of damned Hotel,
+ Discountenanced by God and man;
+ The food?--Sir, you would do as well
+ To cram your belly full of bran.
+
+ The company? Alas, the day
+ That I should dwell with such a crew,
+ With devil anything to say,
+ Nor any one to say it to!
+
+ The place? Although they call it Platz,
+ I will be bold and state my view;
+ It's not a place at all--and that's
+ The bottom verity, my Dew.
+
+ There are, as I will not deny,
+ Innumerable inns; a road;
+ 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;
+ Innumerable dogs that bark;
+ Some air, some weather, and some earth;
+ A native race--God save the mark!--
+
+ A race that works, yet cannot work,
+ Yodels, but cannot yodel right,
+ Such as, unhelp'd, with rusty dirk,
+ I vow that I could wholly smite.
+
+ A river that from morn to night
+ Down all the valley plays the fool;
+ Not once she pauses in her flight,
+ Nor knows the comfort of a pool;
+
+ But still keeps up, by straight or bend,
+ The selfsame pace she hath begun--
+ Still hurry, hurry, to the end--
+ Good God, is that the way to run?
+
+ If I a river were, I hope
+ That I should better realise
+ The opportunities and scope
+ Of that romantic enterprise.
+
+ I should not ape the merely strange,
+ But aim besides at the divine;
+ And continuity and change
+ I still should labour to combine.
+
+ Here should I gallop down the race,
+ Here charge the sterling[2] like a bull;
+ There, as a man might wipe his face,
+ Lie, pleased and panting, in a pool.
+
+ But what, my Dew, in idle mood,
+ What prate I, minding not my debt?
+ What do I talk of bad or good?
+ The best is still a cigarette.
+
+ Me whether evil fate assault,
+ Or smiling providences crown--
+ Whether on high the eternal vault
+ Be blue, or crash with thunder down--
+
+ I judge the best, whate'er befall,
+ Is still to sit on one's behind,
+ And, having duly moistened all,
+ Smoke with an unperturbed mind.
+
+ DAVOS, _November 1880_.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+ [1] "The whole front of the house was lighted, and there were pipes
+ and fiddles, and as much dancing and deray within as used to be in
+ Sir Robert's house at Pace and Yule, and such high seasons."--See
+ "Wandering Willie's Tale" in "Redgauntlet," borrowed perhaps from
+ "Christ's Kirk of the Green."
+
+ [2] In architecture, a series of piles to defend the pier of a bridge.
+
+
+VI
+
+ALCAICS TO HORATIO F. BROWN
+
+ Brave lads in olden musical centuries,
+ Sang, night by night, adorable choruses,
+ Sat late by alehouse doors in April
+ Chaunting in joy as the moon was rising:
+
+ Moon-seen and merry, under the trellises,
+ Flush-faced they played with old polysyllables;
+ Spring scents inspired, old wine diluted;
+ Love and Apollo were there to chorus.
+
+ Now these, the songs, remain to eternity,
+ Those, only those, the bountiful choristers
+ Gone--those are gone, those unremembered
+ Sleep and are silent in earth for ever.
+
+ So man himself appears and evanishes,
+ So smiles and goes; as wanderers halting at
+ Some green-embowered house, play their music,
+ Play and are gone on the windy highway;
+
+ Yet dwells the strain enshrined in the memory
+ Long after they departed eternally,
+ Forth-faring tow'rd far mountain summits,
+ Cities of men on the sounding Ocean.
+
+ Youth sang the song in years immemorial;
+ Brave chanticleer, he sang and was beautiful;
+ Bird-haunted, green tree-tops in springtime
+ Heard and were pleased by the voice of singing;
+
+ Youth goes, and leaves behind him a prodigy--
+ Songs sent by thee afar from Venetian
+ Sea-grey lagunes, sea-paven highways,
+ Dear to me here in my Alpine exile.
+
+ DAVOS, _Spring 1881_.
+
+
+VII
+
+A LYTLE JAPE OF TUSHERIE
+
+ _By A. Tusher_
+
+ The pleasant river gushes
+ Among the meadows green;
+ At home the author tushes;
+ For him it flows unseen.
+
+ The Birds among the Bushes
+ May wanton on the spray;
+ But vain for him who tushes
+ The brightness of the day!
+
+ 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.
+
+ The filthy gutter slushes,
+ The clouds are full of rain,
+ But doomed is he who tushes
+ To tush and tush again.
+
+ At morn with his hair-brushes,
+ Still "tush" he says and weeps;
+ At night again he tushes,
+ And tushes till he sleeps.
+
+ And when at length he pushes
+ Beyond the river dark--
+ 'Las, to the man who tushes,
+ "Tush" shall be God's remark!
+
+ HYÈRES, _May 1883_.
+
+
+VIII
+
+TO VIRGIL AND DORA WILLIAMS
+
+ Here, from the forelands of the tideless sea,
+ Behold and take my offering unadorned.
+ In the Pacific air it sprang; it grew
+ Among the silence of the Alpine air;
+ In Scottish heather blossomed; and at last
+ By that unshapen sapphire, in whose face
+ Spain, Italy, France, Algiers, and Tunis view
+ Their introverted mountains, came to fruit.
+ Back now, my Booklet! on the diving ship,
+ And posting on the rails, to home return,--
+ Home, and the friends whose honouring name you bear.
+
+ HYÈRES, 1883.
+
+
+IX
+
+BURLESQUE SONNET
+
+TO ÆNEAS WILLIAM MACKINTOSH
+
+ Thee, Mackintosh, artificer of light,
+ Thee, the lone smoker hails! the student, thee;
+ Thee, oft upon the ungovernable sea,
+ The seaman, conscious of approaching night;
+ Thou, with industrious fingers, hast outright
+ Mastered that art, of other arts the key,
+ That bids thick night before the morning flee,
+ And lingering day retains for mortal sight.
+ O Promethean workman, thee I hail,
+ Thee hallowed, thee unparalleled, thee bold
+ To affront the reign of sleep and darkness old,
+ Thee William, thee Æneas, thee I sing;
+ Thee by the glimmering taper clear and pale,
+ Of light, and light's purveyance, hail, the king.
+
+
+X
+
+THE FINE PACIFIC ISLANDS
+
+(HEARD IN A PUBLIC-HOUSE AT ROTHERHITHE)
+
+ The jolly English Yellowboy
+ Is a 'ansome coin when new,
+ The Yankee Double-eagle
+ Is large enough for two.
+ O, these may do for seaport towns,
+ For cities these may do;
+ But the dibbs that takes the Hislands
+ Are the dollars of Peru:
+ O, the fine Pacific Hislands,
+ O, the dollars of Peru!
+
+ It's there we buy the cocoanuts
+ Mast 'eaded in the blue;
+ It's there we trap the lasses
+ All waiting for the crew;
+ It's there we buy the trader's rum
+ What bores a seaman through....
+ In the fine Pacific Hislands
+ With the dollars of Peru:
+ In the fine Pacific Hislands
+ With the dollars of Peru!
+
+ Now, messmates, when my watch is up,
+ And I am quite broached to,
+ I'll give a tip to 'Evving
+ Of the 'ansome thing to do:
+ Let 'em just refit this sailor-man
+ And launch him off anew
+ To cruise among the Hislands
+ With the dollars of Peru:
+ In the fine Pacific Hislands
+ With the dollars of Peru!
+
+ TAHITI, _August 1888_.
+
+
+XI
+
+AULD REEKIE
+
+ When chitterin' cauld the day sall daw,
+ Loud may your bonny bugles blaw
+ And loud your drums may beat.
+ Hie owre the land at evenfa'
+ Your lamps may glitter raw by raw,
+ Along the gowsty street.
+
+ I gang nae mair where ance I gaed,
+ By Brunston, Fairmileheid, or Braid;
+ But far frae Kirk and Tron.
+ O still ayont the muckle sea,
+ Still are ye dear, and dear to me,
+ Auld Reekie, still and on!
+
+
+XII
+
+THE LESSON OF THE MASTER
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+ Adela, Adela, Adela Chart,
+ What have you done to my elderly heart?
+ Of all the ladies of paper and ink
+ I count you the paragon, call you the pink.
+ The word of your brother depicts you in part:
+ "You raving maniac!" Adela Chart;
+ But in all the asylums that cumber the ground,
+ So delightful a maniac was ne'er to be found.
+
+ I pore on you, dote on you, clasp you to heart,
+ I laud, love, and laugh at you, Adela Chart,
+ And thank my dear maker the while I admire
+ That I can be neither your husband nor sire.
+ Your husband's, your sire's, were a difficult part;
+ You're a byway to suicide, Adela Chart;
+ But to read of, depicted by exquisite James,
+ O, sure you're the flower and quintessence of dames.
+
+ VAILIMA, _October 1891_.
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE CONSECRATION OF BRAILLE
+
+TO MRS. A. BAKER
+
+ I was a barren tree before,
+ I blew a quenchèd coal,
+ I could not, on their midnight shore,
+ The lonely blind console.
+
+ A moment, lend your hand, I bring
+ My sheaf for you to bind,
+ And you can teach my words to sing
+ In the darkness of the blind.
+
+ VAILIMA, _December 1893_.
+
+
+XIV
+
+SONG
+
+ Light foot and tight foot,
+ And green grass spread,
+ Early in the morning,
+ But hope is on ahead.
+
+ Brief day and bright day,
+ And sunset red,
+ Early in the evening,
+ The stars are overhead.
+
+
+
+
+ PRINTED BY
+
+ CASSELL & CO., LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE
+
+ LONDON, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson -
+Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25), by Robert Louis Stevenson
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