Robert Louis Stevenson: Collected Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Brave lads in olden musical centuries
Sang, night by night, adorable choruses,
Sat late by ale-house 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 forever.

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 toward far mountain summits
Cities of men or the sounding Ocean.

288

Youth sang the song in years immemorial
Brave chanticleer he sang and was beautiful;
Bird-haunted, green tree-tops in April
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.

II
Tales of Arabia

Yes, friend, I own these tales of Arabia
Smile not, as smiled their flawless originals
Age-old but yet untamed, for ages
Pass and the magic is undiminished.

Thus, friend, the tales of old Camaralzaman,
Ayoub, the Slave of Love, or the Calendars
Blind-eyed and ill-starred royal scions,
Charm us in age as they charmed in childhood.

Fair ones, beyond all numerability,
Beam from the palace, beam on humanity,
Bright-eyed, in truth, yet soulless houries
Offering pleasures and only pleasure.

Thus they, the venal Muses Arabian—
Unlike, indeed, to nobler divinities,
Greek Gods or old time-honoured muses
Easily proffer unloved caresses.

289

Lost, lost, the man who mindeth their minstrelsy;
Since still, in sandy, glittering pleasances,
Cold, stony fruits, gem-like but quite in-
Edible, flatter and wholly starve him.

III

[Still I love to rhyme, and still more, rhyming, to wander]

Still I love to rhyme, and still more, rhyming, to wander
Far from the commoner way;
Old trills and falls by the brook-side still do I ponder,
Dreaming tomorrow today.

Come here, come, revive me, Sun-God, teach me, Apollo,
Measures descanted before;
Since I ancient verses seek, I emulous follow
Prints in the marble of yore.

Still strange, strange, they sound in old-young raiment invested,
Songs for the brain to beget—
Young song birds of late in grave old temples benested
Piping and chirruping yet.

Thoughts? no thought has yet unskilled attempted to flutter
Trammelled so vilely in verse;
He who writes but aims at fame and his bread and his butter,
Won with a groan and a curse.

IV

[Flower god, god of the spring, beautiful, bountiful]

Flower god, god of the spring, beautiful, bountiful,
Gold-dyed shield in the sky, lover of versicles,
Here I wander in April,
Cold, grey-headed; and still to my

290

Heart, Spring comes with a bound, Spring the deliverer,
Spring, song-leader in woods, chorally resonant,
Spring, flower planter in meadows,
Child conductor in willowy

Fields deep clotted with bloom, daisies and crocuses:
Here that child from his heart drinks of eternity:
O child, happy are children!
She still smiles on their innocence.

She, dear mother in God, fostering violets,
Fills earth full of her scents, voices and violins:
Thus one cunning in music
Wakes old chords in the memory:

Thus fair earth in the Spring leads her performances.
One more touch of the bow, smell of the virginal
Green—one more, and my bosom
Feels new life with an ecstasy.

V
Horace, Book II, Ode III

Where the pine and the shivering poplar
Love to join with their branches their shadow;
Where through glimmering valleys, the water,
Glass-clear, hurries in murmur, towards Ocean—
Thither command them carry the wine jars—
Wine jars full of the juice of Falernum—
Unguents, Roses to bind in our Chaplets,
Bid your slaves carry down to the margin.
Now, we glory in youth and in riches:
Now, the sisters are merciful toward us.

291

Soon, our Fortune shall turn from us coldly:
Soon, we leave our groves and our houses,
Soon, our gardens by yellow old Tiber;
While our gold that we hoarded so closely
Gladly seizes the joyful successor.

VI
Lines for H. F. Brown

Yes, I remember, and still remember wailing
Wind in the clouds and rainy sea-horizon,
Empty and lit with low, nocturnal glimmer,
How in the strong, deep-plunging, transatlantic
Emigrant ship we sang our songs in chorus.
Piping, the gull flew by, the roaring billows
Yawned and resounded round the mighty vessel
Infinite uproar, endless contradiction;
Yet over all our chorus rose reminding
Wanderers here at sea of unforgotten
Homes and undying, old, memorial loves.

Brown in his haste demanded this from me.
I in my leisure made the present verse.

292

VII
Translations from Martial

EPITAPHIUM EROTII

X. 61

Here lies Erotion, whom at six years old
Fate pilfered. Stranger (when I too am cold
Who shall succeed me in my rural field),
To this small spirit annual honours yield.
Bright be thy hearth, hale be thy babes, I crave,
And this, in thy green farm, the only grave.

V. 34

[Mother and sire, to you do I commend]

Mother and sire, to you do I commend
Tiny Erotion, who must now descend,
A child, among the shadows, and appear
Before hell's bandog and hell's gondolier.
Of six hoar winters she had felt the cold,
But lacked six days of being six years old.
Now she must come, all playful, to that place
Where the great ancients sit with reverend face;
Now lisping, as she used, of whence she came,
Perchance she names and stumbles at my name.
O'er these so fragile bones, let there be laid
A plaything for a turf; and for that maid
That swam light-footed as the thistle-burr
On thee. O Mother earth, be light on her.

293

DE EROTIO PUELLA

V. 37

This girl was sweeter than the song of swans,
And daintier than the lamb upon the lawns
Or Lucrine oyster. She, the flower of girls,
Outshone the light of Erythræan pearls;
The teeth of India that with polish glow,
The untouched lilies or the morning snow.
Her tresses did gold-dust outshine
And fair hair of women of the Rhine.
Compared to her the peacock seemed not fair,
The squirrel lively, or the phoenix rare;
Her on whose pyre the smoke still hovering waits,
Her whom the greedy and unequal fates
On the sixth dawning of her natal day
My child-love and my playmate—snatcht away.

IN MAXIMUM

II. 53

Wouldst thou be free? I think it not, indeed
But if thou wouldst, attend this simple rede:
When quite contented thou canst dine at home
And drink a small wine of the march of Rome;
When thou canst see unmoved thy neighbour's plate,
And wear my threadbare toga in the gate;
When thou hast learned to love a small abode,
And not to choose a mistress à la mode:
When thus contained and bridled thou shalt be,
Then, Maximus, then first shalt thou be free.

294

DE CŒNATIONE MICÆ

II. 59

Look round: You see a little supper room;
But from my window, lo! great Cæsar's tomb!
And the great dead themselves, with jovial breath
Bid you be merry and remember death.

AD OLUM

II. 68

Call me not rebel, though in what I sing
If I no longer hail thee Lord and King
I have redeemed myself with all I had,
And now possess my fortunes poor but glad.
With all I had I have redeemed myself,
And escaped at once from slavery and pelf.
The unruly wishes must a ruler take,
Our high desires do our low fortunes make:
Those only who desire palatial things
Do bear the fetters and the frowns of Kings;
Set free thy slave; thou settest free thyself.

AD QUINTILIANUM

II. 90

O chief director of the growing race,
Of Rome the glory and of Rome the grace,
Me, O Quintilian, may you not forgive
Though, far from labour, I make haste to live?
Some burn to gather wealth, lay hands on rule,
Or with white statues fill the atrium full.

295

The talking hearth, the rafters swart with smoke,
Live fountains and rough grass, my love invokes:
A sturdy slave: a not too learned wife:
Nights filled with slumber, and a quiet life.

AD PISCATOREM

IV. 30

For these are sacred fishes all
Who know that lord who is lord of all;
Come to the brim and nose the friendly hand
That sways and can beshadow all the land.
Nor only so, but have their names, and come
When they are summoned by the Lord of Rome.
Here once his line an impious Libyan threw;
And as with tremulous reed his prey he drew,
Straight, the light failed him.
He groped, nor found the prey that he had ta'en.
Now as a warning to the fisher clan
Beside the lake he sits, a beggarman.
Thou, then, while still thine innocence is pure,
Flee swiftly, nor presume to set thy lure;
Respect these fishes, for their friends are great
And in the waters empty all thy bait.

DE HORTIS JULII MARTIALIS

IV. 64

My Martial owns a garden, famed to please,
Beyond the glades of the Hesperides;
Along Janiculum lies the chosen block
Where the cool grottos trench the hanging rock.

296

The moderate summit, something plain and bare,
Tastes overhead of a serener air;
And while the clouds besiege the vales below,
Keeps the clear heaven and doth with sunshine glow.
To the June stars that circle in the skies
The dainty roofs of that tall villa rise.
Hence do the seven imperial hills appear;
And you may view the whole of Rome from here:
Beyond, the Alban and the Tuscan hills;
And the cool groves and the cool falling rills.
Rubre Fidenæ, and with virgin blood
Anointed once Perenna's orchard wood.
Thence the Flaminian, the Salarian way,
Stretch far abroad below the dome of day;
And lo! the traveller toiling toward his home;
And all unheard, the chariot speeds to Rome!
For here no whisper of the wheels; and tho'
The Mulvian Bridge, above the Tiber's flow,
Hangs all in sight, and down the sacred stream
The sliding barges vanish like a dream,
The seaman's shrilling pipe not enters here,
Nor the rude cries of porters on the pier.
And if so rare the house, how rarer far
The welcome and the weal that therein are!
So free the access, the doors so widely thrown
You half imagine all to be your own.

AD MARTIALEM

V. 20

God knows, my Martial, if we two could be
To enjoy our days set wholly free;
To the true life together bend our mind,
And take a furlough from the falser kind,

297

No rich saloon, nor palace of the great,
Nor suit at law should trouble our estate;
On no vainglorious statues should we look,
But of a walk, a talk, a little book,
Baths, wells, and meads and the verandah shade,
Let all our travels and our toils be made.
Now neither lives unto himself, alas!
And the good suns we see, that flash and pass
And perish; and the bell that knells them cries,
‘Another gone: O when will ye arise?’

AN IMITATION, PINDARIS CAUSA

VI. 16

Lo, in thy green enclosure here,
Let not the ugly or the old appear,
Divine Priapus; but with leaping tread
The schoolboy, and the golden head
Of the slim filly twelve years old—
Let these to enter and to steal be bold!

AD NEPOTEM

VI. 27

O Nepos, twice my neighbour (since at home
We're door by door by Flora's temple dome,
And in the country, still conjoined by fate,
Behold our villas, standing gate by gate!)
Thou hast a daughter, dearer far than life,
Thy image and the image of thy wife;
But why for her neglect the flowing can
And lose the prime of thy Falernian?

298

Hoard casks of money, if to hoard be thine;
But let the daughter drink a younger wine!
Let her go rich and wise, in silk and fur;
Lay down a bin that shall grow old with her;
But thou, meantime, the while the batch is sound,
With pleased companions pass the bowl around:
Nor let the childless only taste delights,
For Fathers also may enjoy their nights.

DE M. ANTONIO

X. 23

Now Antonius, in a smiling age,
Counts of his life the fifteenth finished stage.
The rounded days and the safe years he sees
Nor fears death's water mounting round his knees,
To him remembering not one day is sad,
Not one but that its memory makes him glad.
So good men lengthen life; and to recall
The past, is to have twice enjoyed it all.

IN LUPUM

XI. 18

Beyond the gates, you gave a farm to till:
I have a larger on my window-sill!
A farm, d'ye say? Is this a farm to you?—
Where for all woods I spy one tuft of rue,
And that so rusty, and so small a thing,
One shrill cicada hides it with a wing;
Where one cucumber covers all the plain;
And where one serpent rings himself in vain

299

To enter wholly; and a single snail
Eats all, and exit fasting—to the jail.
Here shall I wait in vain till figs be set,
Or till the spring disclose the violet.
Through all my wilds a tameless mouse careers,
And in that narrow boundary appears,
Huge as the stalking lion of Algiers,
Huge as the fabled boar of Calydon.
And all my hay is at one swoop impresst.
By one low-flying swallow for her nest.
Strip god Priapus of each attribute
Here finds he scarce a pedestal to foot.
The gathered harvest scarcely brims a spoon;
And all my vintage drips in a cocoon.
Generous are you, but I more generous still:
Take back your farm and hand me half a gill!

IN CHARIDEMUM

XI. 39

You, Charidemus, who my cradle swung
And watched me all the days that I was young—
You, at whose steps the laziest slaves awake
And both the bailiff and the butler quake—
The barber's suds now blacken with my beard
And my rough kisses make the maids afeard:
Still, in your eyes, before your judgement seat,
I am the baby that you used to beat.
You must do all things, unreproved; but I
If once to play or to my love I fly,
Big with reproach, I see your eyebrows twitch,
And for the accustomed cane your fingers itch.

300

If something daintily attired I go,
Straight you exclaim: ‘Your father did not so!’
And, frowning, count the bottles on the board,
As though my cellar were your private hoard.
Enough, at last! I have borne all I can,
And your own mistress hails me for a man.

DE LIGURRA

XII. 61

You fear, Ligurra—above all, you long—
That I should smite you with a stinging song,
This dreadful honour you both fear and hope:
Both quite in vain: you fall below my scope.
The Libyan lion tears the roaring bull,
He does not harm the midge along the pool.
But if so close this stands in your regard,
From some blind tap fish forth a drunken bard,
Who shall, with charcoal, on the privy wall,
Immortalise your name for once and all.

VIII

[As in their flight the birds of song]

As in their flight the birds of song
Halt here and there in sweet and sunny dales
But halt not overlong;
The time one rural song to sing
They pause; then following bounteous gales
Steer forward on the wing:
Sun-servers they, from first to last,
Upon the sun they await
To ride the sailing blast.

301

So he a while in our contested state,
A while abode, not longer—for his Sun—
Mother we say, no tenderer name we know—
With whose diviner glow
His early days had shone,
Now to withdraw her radiance had begun.
Or lest a wrong I say, not she withdrew,
But the loud stream of men day after day
And great dust columns of the common way
Between them grew and grew:
And he and she for evermore might yearn,
But to the spring the rivulets not return
Nor to the bosom comes the child again.

And he (O may we fancy so!),
He, feeling time for ever flow
And flowing bear him forth and far away
From that dear ingle where his life began
And all his treasure lay—
He, waxing into man,
And ever farther, ever closer wound
In this obstreperous world's ignoble round
From that poor prospect turned his face away.

IX
To Mrs MacMorland

Im Schnee der Alpen—so it runs
To those divine accords—and here
We dwell in Alpine snows and suns
A motley crew, for half the year:
A motley crew we dwell, to taste—
A shivering band in hope and fear—
That sun upon the snowy waste,
That Alpine ether cold and clear.

302

Up from the laboured plain, and up
From low sea-levels, we arise
To drink of that diviner cup,
The rarer air, the clearer skies;
Far, as the great, old, godly King
From mankind's turbid valley cries,
So all we mountain-lovers sing:
I to the hills will lift mine eyes!

The bells that ring, the peaks that climb,
The frozen snow's unbroken curd,
Might well revindicate in rhyme
The pauseless stream, the absent bird:
In vain—for to the deeps of life
You, lady, you, my heart have stirred;
And since you say you love my wife,
Be sure I love you for the word.

Of kindness, here, I nothing say—
Such loveless kindnesses there are
In that grimacing, common way,
That old, unhonoured social war:
Love but my dog and love my love
Adore with me a common star—
I value not the rest above
The ashes of a bad cigar.

X

[Come, my beloved, hear from me]

Come, my beloved, hear from me
Tales of the woods or open sea.
Let our aspiring fancy rise
A wren's flight higher toward the skies;
Or far from cities, brown and bare,
Play at the least in open air.

303

In all the tales we hear or tell
Still let the unfathomed ocean swell,
Or shallower forest sound abroad
Below the lonely stars of God;
In all, let something still be done,
Still in a corner shine the sun,
Slim-ankled maids be fleet of foot
Nor man disown the rural flute.
Still let the hero from the start
In honest sweat and beats of heart
Push on along the untrodden road
For some inviolate abode.
Still, O beloved, let me hear
The great bell beating far and near—
The odd, unknown, enchanted gong
That on the road hales men along,
That from the mountain calls afar,
That lures the vessel from a star,
And with a still, aërial sound
Makes all the earth enchanted ground.
Love and the love of life and act
Dance, live and sing through all our favoured tract;
Till the great God enamoured gives,
To him who reads, to him who lives,
That rare and fair romantic strain
That whoso hears must hear again.

XI

[Since years ago for evermore]

Since years ago for evermore
My cedar ship I drew to shore;
And to the road and river-bed
And the green, nodding reeds, I said

304

Mine ignorant and last farewell:
Now with content at home I dwell,
And now divide my sluggish life
Betwixt my verses and my wife:
In vain: for when the lamp is lit
And by the laughing fire I sit,
Still with the tattered atlas spread
Interminable roads I tread.

XII

[Far over seas an island is]

Far over seas an island is
Whereon when day is done
A grove of tossing palms
Are printed on the sun.
And all about the reefy shore
Blue breakers flash and fall.
There shall I go, methinks,
When I am done with all.

Have I no castle then in Spain,
No island of the mind,
Where I can turn and go again
When life shall prove unkind.
Up, sluggard soul! and far from here
Our mountain forest seek;
Or nigh the enchanted island, steer
Down the desirèd creek.

XIII

[If I could arise and travel away]

If I could arise and travel away
Over the plains of the night and the day,
I should arrive at a land at last
Where all of our sins and sorrows are past
And we're done with the ten commandments.

305

The name of the land I must not tell;
Green is the grass and cool the well;
Virtue is easy to find and to keep,
And the sinner may lie at his pleasure and sleep
By the side of the ten commandments.

Income and honour, and glory and gold
Grow on the bushes all over the wold;
And if ever a man has a touch of remorse,
He eats of the flower of the golden gorse,
And to hell with the ten commandments.

He goes to church in his Sunday's best;
He eats and drinks with perfect zest;
And whether he lives in heaven or hell
Is more than you or I can tell;
But he's done with the ten commandments.

XIV

[Now bare to the beholder's eye]

Now bare to the beholder's eye,
Your late denuded lendings lie,
Subsiding slowly where they fell,
A disinvested citadel;
The obdurate corset, cupid's foe,
The Dutchman's breeches frilled below.
Hose that the lover loves to note,
And white and crackling petticoat.

From these, that on the ground repose,
Their lady lately re-arose;
And laying by the lady's name
A living woman re-became.
Of her, that from the public eye
They do inclose and fortify,

306

Now, lying scattered as they fell
An indiscreeter tale they tell:
Of that more soft and secret her
Whose daylong fortresses they were,
By fading warmth, by lingering print,
These now discarded scabbards hint.

A twofold change the ladies know.
First, in the morn the bugles blow,
And they, with floral hues and scents,
Man their be-ribboned battlements.
But let the stars appear, and they
Shed inhumanities away;
And from the changeling fashion sees,
Through comic and through sweet degrees,
In nature's toilet unsurpassed,
Forth leaps the laughing girl at last.

XV

[Men are Heaven's piers; they evermore]

Men are Heaven's piers; they evermore
Unwearying bear the skyey floor;
Man's theatre they bear with ease,
Unfrowning caryatides!
I, for my wife, the sun uphold
Or, dozing, strike the seasons cold.
She, on her side, in fairy-wise
Deals in diviner mysteries,
By spells to make the fuel burn
And keep the parlour warm, to turn
Water to wine and stones to bread
By her unconquered hero-head.
Sequestered in the seas of life,
A Crusoe couple, man and wife,

307

With all our good, with all our ill,
Our unfrequented isle we fill;
And victor in day's petty wars,
Each for the other lights the stars.
Come then, my Eve, and to and fro
Let us about our garden go;
And grateful-hearted, hand in hand,
Revisit all our tillage land
And marvel at our strange estate.
For hooded ruin at the gate
Sits watchful, and the angels fear
To see us tread so boldly here.
Meanwhile, my Eve, with flowers and grass,
Our perishable days we pass:
Far more the thorn observe—and see
How our enormous sins go free—
Nor less admire, beside the rose,
How far a little virtue goes.

XVI

[Fixed is the doom; and to the last of years]

Fixed is the doom; and to the last of years
Teacher and taught, friend, lover, parent, child,
Each walks, though near, yet separate; each beholds
His dear ones shine beyond him like the stars.
We also, love, for ever dwell apart;
With cries approach, with cries behold the gulph,
The Unvaulted: as two great eagles that do wheel in air
Above a mountain, and with screams confer,
Far heard athwart the cedars.

Yet the years
Shall bring us ever nearer; day by day
Endearing, week by week; till death at last

308

Dissolve that long divorce. By faith we love,
Not knowledge; and by faith though far removed
Dwell as in perfect nearness, heart to heart.

We but excuse
Those things we merely are; and to our souls
A brave deception cherish.
So from unhappy war a man returns
Unfearing, or the seaman from the deep;
So from cool night and woodlands, to a feast
May some one enter, and still breathe of dews,
And in her eyes still wear the dusky night.

XVII

[So live, so love, so use that fragile hour]

So live, so love, so use that fragile hour,
That when the dark hand of the shining power
Shall one from other, wife or husband, take,
The poor survivor may not weep and wake.

XVIII
To Mrs E. F. Strickland

The freedom and the joy of days
When health was with us still,
The pleasure of green woods and ways
And of the breathing hill:
These that so dear a value set
Upon the times of yore,
We may remember, may forget—
We must enjoy no more.
As in strange lands, when exiles meet
And dream of long ago,
They with a nearer kindness greet

309

The sharers of their woe:
So, all unknown, from far away,
I, lady, turn to you—
Your fellow exile from the day,
The breezes and the dew.

XIX
For Richmond's Garden Wall

When Thomas set this tablet here,
Time laughed at the vain chanticleer;
And ere the moss had dimmed the stone,
Time had defaced that garrison.
Now I in turn keep watch and ward
In my red house, in my walled yard
Of sunflowers, sitting here at ease
With friends and my bright canvasses.
But hark, and you may hear quite plain
Time's chuckled laughter in the lane.

XX
To Frederick Locker

Not roses to the rose, I trow,
The thistle sends, nor to the bee
Do wasps bring honey. Wherefore now
Should Locker ask a verse from me?

Martial, perchance—but he is dead,
And Herrick now must rhyme no more;
Still burning with the muse, they tread
(And arm in arm) the shadowy shore.

310

They, if they lived, with dainty hand,
To music as of mountain brooks,
Might bring you worthy words to stand
Unshamed, dear Locker, in your books.

But tho' these fathers of your race
Be gone before, yourself a sire,
Today you see before your face
Your stalwart youngsters touch the lyre.

On these—on Lang, or Dobson—call,
Long leaders of the songful feast.
They lend a verse your laughing fall—
A verse they owe you at the least.

XXI
To Master Andrew Lang

On his re-editing of ‘Cupid and Psyche’

You, that are much a fisher in the pool
Of things forgotten, and from thence bring up
Gold of old song, and diamonds of dead speech,
The scholar, and the angler, and the friend
Of the pale past, this unremembered tale
Restore, and this dead author re-inspire;
And lo, Oblivion the iniquitous
Remembers, and the stone is rolled away.
And he, the long asleep, sees once again
The busy bookshop, once again is read.
Brave as at first, in his new garb of print,
Shines forth the Elizabethan. But when Death,
The unforgettable shepherd, shall have come

311

And numbered us with these, the numberless,
The inheritors of slumber and neglect—
O correspondent of the immortal dead,
Shall any pious hand re-edit us?

XXII

[Fair Isle at Sea—thy lovely name]

Fair Isle at Sea—thy lovely name
Soft in my ear like music came.
That sea I loved, and once or twice
I touched at isles of Paradise.

XXIII
The Family

I MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

High as my heart!—the quip be mine
That draws their stature to a line,
My pair of fairies plump and dark,
The dryads of my cattle park.
Here by my window close I sit,
And watch (and my heart laughs at it)
How these my dragon-lilies are
Alike and yet dissimilar.
From European womankind
They are divided and defined
By the free limb and the plain mind,
The nobler gait, the naked foot,
The indiscreeter petticoat;

312

And show, by each endearing cause,
More like what Eve in Eden was—
Buxom and free, flowing and fine,
In every limb, in every line,
Inimitably feminine.
Like ripe fruit on the espaliers
Their sun-bepainted hue appears,
And the white lace (when lace they wear)
Shows on their golden breast more fair.
So far the same they seem, and yet
One apes the shrew, one the coquette—
A sybil or a truant child.
One runs, with a crop-halo, wild;
And one, more sedulous to please,
Her long dark hair, deep as her knees
And thrid with living silver, sees.
What need have I of wealth or fame,
A club, an often-printed name?
It more contents my heart to know
Them going simply to and fro:
To see the dear pair pause and pass
Girded, among the drenching grass,
In the resplendent sun; or hear,
When the huge moon delays to appear,
Their kindred voices sounding near
In the verandah twilight. So
Sound ever; so, for ever go
And come upon your small brown feet:
Twin honours to my country seat
And its too happy master lent:
My solace and its ornament!

313

II THE DAUGHTER, TEUILA, NATIVE NAME FOR ADORNER

Man, child or woman, none from her,
The insatiable embellisher,
Escapes! She leaves, where'er she goes,
A wreath, a ribbon, or a rose:
A bow or else a button changed,
Two hairs coquettishly deranged,
Some vital trifle takes the eye
And shows the adorner has been by.
Is fortune more obdurate grown?
And does she leave my dear alone
With none to adorn, none to caress?
Straight on her proper loveliness
She broods and lingers, cuts and carves
With combs and brushes, rings and scarves.
The treasure of her hair she takes;
Therewith a new presentment makes.
Babe, Goddess, Naïad of the grot,
And weeps if any like it not!
Her absent, she shall still be found,
A posse of native maids around
Her and her whirring instrument
Collected and on learning bent.
Oft clustered by her tender knees
(Smiling himself) the gazer sees,
Compact as flowers in garden beds,
The smiling faces and shaved heads
Of the brown island babes: with whom
She exults to decorate her room,
To draw them, cheer them when they cry,
And still to pet and prettify.

314

Or see, as in a looking-glass
Her graceful, dimpled person pass,
Nought great therein but eyes and hair,
On her true business here and there;
Her huge, half-naked Staff, intent,
See her review and regiment,
An ant with elephants, and how
A smiling mouth, a clouded brow,
Satire and turmoil, quips and tears,
She deals among her grenadiers!
Her pantry and her kitchen squad,
Six-footers all, hang on her nod,
Incline to her their martial chests,
With school-boy laughter hail her jests,
And do her in her kilted dress
Obsequious obeisances.
But rather to behold her when
She plies for me the unresting pen!
And while her crimson blood peeps out
Hints a suggestion, halts a doubt—
Laughs at a jest; or with a shy
Glance of a parti-coloured eye
Half brown, half gold, approves, delights
And warms the slave for whom she writes!
So dear, may you be never done
Your pretty, busy round to run.
And show, with changing frocks and scents,
Your ever-varying lineaments,
Your saucy step, your languid grace,
Your sullen and your smiling face,
Sound sense, true valour, baby fears,
And bright unreasonable tears:
The Hebe of our ageing tribe:
Matron and child, my friend and scribe!

315

III

About my fields, in the broad sun
And blaze of noon, there goeth one,
Barefoot and robed in blue, to scan
With the hard eye of the husbandman
My harvests and my cattle. Her,
When even puts the birds astir
And day has set in the great woods,
We seek, among her garden roods,
With bells and cries in vain: the while
Lamps, plate, and the decanter smile
On the forgotten board. But she,
Deaf, blind, and prone on face and knee,
Forgets time, family and feast
And digs like a demented beast.

IV

Tall as a guardsman, pale as the east at dawn,
Who strides in strange apparel on the lawn?
Rails for his breakfast? routs his vassals out
(Like boys escaped from school) with song and shout?
Kind and unkind, his Maker's final freak,
Part we deride the child, part deride the antique!
See where his gang, like frogs, among the dew
Crouch at their duty, an unquiet crew;
Adjust their staring kilts; and their swift eyes
Turn still to him who sits to supervise.
He in the midst, perched on a fallen tree
Eyes them at labour; and, guitar on knee,
Now ministers alarm, now scatters joy,
Now twangs a halting chord—now tweaks a boy.

316

Thorough in all, my resolute vizier,
Plays both the despot and the volunteer,
Exacts with fines obedience to my laws,
—And for his music, too, exacts applause.

V

What glory for a boy of ten,
Who now must three gigantic men,
And two enormous, dapple grey
New Zealand pack-horses, array
And lead, and wisely resolute
Our day-long business execute
In the far shore-side town. His soul
Glows in his bosom like a coal;
His innocent eyes glitter again,
And his hand trembles on the rein.
Once he reviews his whole command
And chivalrously planting hand
On hip—a borrowed attitude—
Rides off downhill into the wood.

VI

The old lady (so they say) but I
Admire your young vitality.
Still brisk of foot, still busy and keen
In and about and up and down.
I hear you pass with bustling feet
The long verandahs round, and beat
Your bell, and ‘Lotu! Lotu!’ cry;
Thus calling our queer company
In morning or in evening dim,
To prayers and the oft mangled hymn.

317

All day you watch across the sky
The silent, shining cloudlands ply,
That, huge as countries, swift as birds,
Beshade the isles by halves and thirds;
Till each with battlemented crest
Stands anchored in the ensanguined west,
An Alp enchanted. All the day
You hear the exuberant wind at play,
In vast, unbroken voice uplift
In roaring tree, round whistling clift.

VII

I meanwhile in the populous house apart
Sit, snugly chambered, and my silent art
Uninterrupted, unremitting ply
Before the dawn, by morning lamplight, by
The glow of smelting noon, and when the sun
Dips past my westering hill and day is done;
So, bending still over my trade of words,
I hear the morning and the evening birds,
The morning and the evening stars behold;
So there apart I sit as once of old
Napier in wizard Merchiston; and my
Brown innocent aides in home and husbandry,
Wonder askance, What ails the boss? they ask,
Him, richest of the rich, an endless task
Before the earliest birds or servants stir
Calls and detains him daylong prisoner?
He, whose innumerable dollars hewed
This cleft in the boar- and devil-haunted wood,
And bade therein, far seen to seas and skies,
His many-windowed, painted palace rise
Red-roofed, blue-walled, a rainbow on the hill,
A wonder in the forest glade: he still

318

Unthinkable Aladdin, dawn and dark,
Scribbles and scribbles, like a German clerk.
We see the fact, but tell, O tell us why?
My reverend washman and wise butler cry.
And from their lips the unanswered questions drop.
How can he live that does not keep a shop?
And why does he, being acclaimed so rich,
Not dwell with other gentry on the beach?
But harbour, impiously brave,
In the cold, uncanny wood, haunt of the fleeing slave?
The sun and the loud rain here alternate:
Here, in the unfathomable bush, the great
Voice of the wind makes a magnanimous sound.
Here, too, no doubt, the shouting doves abound
To be a dainty; here in the twilight stream
That brawls adown the forest, frequent gleam
The jewel-eyes of crawfish. These be good:
Grant them! and can the thing be understood?
That this white chief, whom no distress compels,
Far from all compeers in the mountain dwells?
And finds a manner of living to his wish
Apart from high society and sea fish?
Meanwhile at times the manifold
Imperishable perfumes of the past
And coloured pictures rise on me thick and fast
And I remember the white rime, the loud
Lamplitten city, shops and the changing crowd
And I remember home and the old time,
The winding river, the white morning rime,
The autumn robin by the riverside,
That pipes in the grey eve.

319

VIII

These rings, O my beloved pair,
For me on your brown fingers wear:
Each, a perpetual caress
To tell you of my tenderness.

Let—when at morning as ye rise
The golden topaz takes your eyes—
To each her emblem whisper sure
Love was awake an hour before.

Ah yes! an hour before ye woke
Low to my heart my emblem spoke,
And grave, as to renew an oath,
It I have kissed and blessed you both.

XXIV

[Light foot and tight foot]

Light foot and tight foot
And green grass spread,
Early in the morning—
But hope is on ahead.

Stout foot and proud foot
And gray dust spread,
Early in the evening—
And hope lies dead.

Long life and short life,
The last word said,
Early in the evening
There lies the bed.

320

Brief day and bright day
And sunset red,
Early in the evening
The stars are overhead.

XXV
To the Stormy Petrel

To my Wife, on her Birthday

Ever perilous
And precious, like an ember from the fire
Or gem from a volcano, we today
When the drums of war reverberate in the land
And every face is for the battle blacked—
No less the sky, that over sodden woods
Menaces now in the disconsolate calm
The hurly-burly of the hurricane,
Do now most fitly celebrate your day.

Yet amid turmoil keep for me, my dear,
The kind domestic faggot. Let the hearth
Shine ever as (I praise my honest gods)
In peace and tempest it has ever shone.

XXVI

[I, whom Apollo sometime visited]

I, whom Apollo sometime visited,
Or feigned to visit, now, my day being done,
Do slumber wholly; nor shall know at all
The weariness of changes, nor perceive
Immeasurable sands of centuries
Drink up the blanching ink, or the loud sound
Of generations beat the music down.

321

XXVII

[As with heaped bees at hiving time]

As with heaped bees at hiving time
The boughs are clotted, as (ere prime)
Heaven swarms with stars, or the city street
Pullulates with faring feet;
So swarmed my senses once; that now
Repose behind my tranquil brow,
Unsealed, asleep, quiescent, clear;
Now only the vast shapes I hear
Hear—and my hearing slowly fills—
Rivers and winds among the twisting hills,
And hearken—and my face is lit—
Life facing; death pursuing it.