The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 14

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 sterling2 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.