Songs of Travel

AND OTHER VERSES

by
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

eighth impression

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1908

The following collection of verses, written at various times and places, principally after the author’s final departure from England in 1887, was sent home by him for publication some months before his death.  He had tried them in several different orders and under several different titles, as “Songs and Notes of Travel,” “Posthumous Poems,” etc., and in the end left their naming and arrangement to the present editor, with the suggestion that they should be added as Book III. to future editions of “Underwoods.”  This suggestion it is proposed to carry out; but in the meantime, for the benefit of those who possess “Underwoods” in its original form, it has been thought desirable to publish them separately in the present volume.  They have already been included in the Edinburgh Edition of the author’s works.

S. C.

CONTENTS

i.

The Vagabond—Give to me the life I love

ii.

Youth and Love: i.—Once only by the garden gate

iii.

Youth and Love: ii.—To the heart of youth the world is a highwayside

iv.

In dreams, unhappy, I behold you stand

v.

She rested by the Broken Brook

vi.

The infinite shining heavens

vii.

Plain as the glistering planets shine

viii.

To you, let snows and roses

ix.

Let Beauty awake in the morn from beautiful dreams

x.

I know not how it is with you

xi.

I will make you brooches and toys for your delight

xii.

We have loved of Yore—Berried brake and reedy island

xiii.

Mater Triumphans—Son of my woman’s body, you go, to the drum and fife

xiv.

Bright is the ring of words

xv.

In the highlands, in the country places

xvi.

Home no more home to me, wither must I wander?

xvii.

Winter—In rigorous hours, when down the iron lane

xviii.

The stormy evening closes now in vain

xix.

To Dr. Hake—In the belovèd hour that ushers day

xx.

To ---—I knew thee strong and quiet like the hills

xxi.

The morning drum-call on my eager ear

xxii.

I have trod the upward and downward slope

xxiii.

He hears with gladdened heart the thunder

xxiv.

Farewell, fair day and fading light!

xxv.

If this were Faith—God, if this were enough

xxvi.

My Wife—Trusty, dusky, vivid, true

xxvii.

To the Muse—Resign the rhapsody, the dream

xxviii.

To an Island Princess—Since long ago, a child at home

xxix.

To Kalakaua—The Sliver Ship, my King—that was her name

xxx.

To Princess Kaiulani—Forth form her land to mine she goes

xxxi.

To Mother Maryanne—To see the infinite pity of this place

xxxii.

In Memoriam E. H.—I knew a silver head was bright beyond compare

xxxiii.

To my Wife—Long must elapse ere you behold again

xxxiv.

To my Old Familiars—Do you remember—can we e’er forget?

xxxv.

The tropics vanish, and meseems that I

xxxvi.

To S. C.—I heard the pulse of the besieging sea

xxxvii.

The House of Tembinoka—Let us, who part like brothers, part like bards

xxxviii.

The Woodman—In all the grove, not stream nor bird

xxxix.

Tropic Rain—As the single pang of the blow, when the metal is mingled well

xl.

An End of Travel—Let now your soul in this substantial world

xli.

We uncommiserate pass into the night

xlii.

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone

xliii.

To S. R. Crockett—Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and rain are flying

xliv.

Evensong—The embers of the day are red

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 we joined and parted.
I must fulfil an empty fate
   And travel the uncharted.

Hail and farewell!  I must arise,
   Leave here the fatted cattle,
And paint on foreign lands and skies
   My Odyssey of battle.

The untented Kosmos my abode,
   I pass, a wilful stranger:
My mistress still the open road
   And the bright eyes of danger.

Come ill or well, the cross, the crown,
   The rainbow or the thunder,
I fling my soul and body down
   For God to plough them under.

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 moorfowl,
   Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers;
Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley,
   Soft flow the stream through the even-flowing hours;
Fair the day shine as it shone on my childhood—
   Fair shine the day on the house with open door;
Birds come and cry there and twitter in the chimney—
   But I go for ever and come again no more.

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! do you hear the passing flute?

I threw one look to either hand,
And knew I was in Fairyland.
And yet one point of being so
I lacked.  For, Lady (as you know),
Whoever by his might of hand,
Won entrance into Fairyland,
Found always with admiring eyes
A Fairy princess kind and wise.
It was not long I waited; soon
Upon my threshold, in broad noon,
Gracious and helpful, wise and good,
The Fairy Princess Moë stood. [44]

Tantira, Tahiti, Nov. 5, 1888.

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 [45]—
The Silver Ship, at rest from winds and tides,
Below your palace in your harbour rides:
And the seafarers, sitting safe on shore,
Like eager merchants count their treasures o’er.
One gift they find, one strange and lovely thing,
Now doubly precious since it pleased a king.

The right, my liege, is ancient as the lyre
For bards to give to kings what kings admire.
’Tis mine to offer for Apollo’s sake;
And since the gift is fitting, yours to take.
To golden hands the golden pearl I bring:
The ocean jewel to the island king.

Honolulu, Feb. 3, 1889.

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 brier,
The year-old cart-tracks perfect in the mire,
The wayside smoke, perchance, the dwarfish huts,
And ramblers’ donkey drinking from the ruts:—
Long ere you trace how deviously it leads,
Back from man’s chimneys and the bleating meads
To the woodland shadow, to the sylvan hush,
When but the brooklet chuckles in the brush—
Back from the sun and bustle of the vale
To where the great voice of the nightingale
Fills all the forest like a single room,
And all the banks smell of the golden broom;
So wander on until the eve descends.
And back returning to your firelit friends,
You see the rosy sun, despoiled of light,
Hung, caught in thickets, like a schoolboy’s kite.

Here from the sea the unfruitful sun shall rise,
Bathe the bare deck and blind the unshielded eyes;
The allotted hours aloft shall wheel in vain
And in the unpregnant ocean plunge again.
Assault of squalls that mock the watchful guard,
And pluck the bursting canvas from the yard,
And senseless clamour of the calm, at night
Must mar your slumbers.  By the plunging light,
In beetle-haunted, most unwomanly bower
Of the wild-swerving cabin, hour by hour . . .

Schooner ‘Equator.’

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
Brier and fern strove to the blood:
The hooked liana in his gin
Noosed his reluctant neighbours in:
There the green murderer throve and spread,
Upon his smothering victims fed,
And wantoned on his climbing coil.
Contending roots fought for the soil
Like frightened demons: with despair
Competing branches pushed for air.
Green conquerors from overhead
Bestrode the bodies of their dead:
The Caesars of the sylvan field,
Unused to fail, foredoomed to yield:
For in the groins of branches, lo!
The cancers of the orchid grow.
Silent as in the listed ring
Two chartered wrestlers strain and cling;
Dumb as by yellow Hooghly’s side
The suffocating captives died;
So hushed the woodland warfare goes
Unceasing; and the silent foes
Grapple and smother, strain and clasp
Without a cry, without a gasp.
Here also sound thy fans, O God,
Here too thy banners move abroad:
Forest and city, sea and shore,
And the whole earth, thy threshing-floor!
The drums of war, the drums of peace,
Roll through our cities without cease,
And all the iron halls of life
Ring with the unremitting strife.

The common lot we scarce perceive.
Crowds perish, we nor mark nor grieve:
The bugle calls—we mourn a few!
What corporal’s guard at Waterloo?
What scanty hundreds more or less
In the man-devouring Wilderness?
What handful bled on Delhi ridge?
—See, rather, London, on thy bridge
The pale battalions trample by,
Resolved to slay, resigned to die.
Count, rather, all the maimed and dead
In the unbrotherly war of bread.
See, rather, under sultrier skies
What vegetable Londons rise,
And teem, and suffer without sound:
Or in your tranquil garden ground,
Contented, in the falling gloom,
Saunter and see the roses bloom.
That these might live, what thousands died!
All day the cruel hoe was plied;
The ambulance barrow rolled all day;
Your wife, the tender, kind, and gay,
Donned her long gauntlets, caught the spud,
And bathed in vegetable blood;
And the long massacre now at end,
See! where the lazy coils ascend,
See, where the bonfire sputters red
At even, for the innocent dead.

Why prate of peace? when, warriors all,
We clank in harness into hall,
And ever bare upon the board
Lies the necessary sword.
In the green field or quiet street,
Besieged we sleep, beleaguered eat;
Labour by day and wake o’ nights,
In war with rival appetites.
The rose on roses feeds; the lark
On larks.  The sedentary clerk
All morning with a diligent pen
Murders the babes of other men;
And like the beasts of wood and park,
Protects his whelps, defends his den.

Unshamed the narrow aim I hold;
I feed my sheep, patrol my fold;
Breathe war on wolves and rival flocks,
A pious outlaw on the rocks
Of God and morning; and when time
Shall bow, or rivals break me, climb
Where no undubbed civilian dares,
In my war harness, the loud stairs
Of honour; and my conqueror
Hail me a warrior fallen in war.

Vailima.

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 howes of the silent vanished races,
   And winds, austere and pure:

Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
   Hills of home! and to hear again the call;
Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying,
   And hear no more at all.

Vailima.

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 enbalmèd land
Blows sudden toward the shore,
And claps my cottage door.
I hear the signal, Lord—I understand.
The night at Thy command
Comes.  I will eat and sleep and will not question more.

Vailima.

Footnotes

[44]  This is the same Princess Moë whose charms of person and disposition have been recorded by the late Lord Pembroke in South Sea Bubbles, and by M. Pierre Loti in the Mariage de Loti.

[45]  The yacht Casco had been so called by the people of Fakarava in the Paumotus.