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

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.

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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.