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

Yet was never opposed to the church,
So why do grave people agree,
To leave me alone in the lurch.
From my birth a desirable youth
In amenity ever I shone
Yet no merry andrew was I
To be carelessly flouted upon.
High, angry and sour are the words
With which I have ever been curst,
And yet though impenitent now
I was easily led at the first.

II

[Here he comes, big with Statistics]

Here he comes, big with Statistics,
Troubled and sharp about fac's.
He has heaps of the Form that is thinkable—
The stuff that is feeling, he lacks.

Do you envy this whiskered absurdity,
With pince-nez and clerical tie?
Poor fellow, he's blind of a sympathy!
I'd rather be blind of an eye.

330

III
To Charles Baxter

Blame me not that this epistle
Is the first you have from me.
Idleness has 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 deceptive,
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.

331

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
These 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 heads,
They that looked in life but plainly,
How they stir our spirits vainly
When they come to us Alcestis—
Like, returning from the dead!

332

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.

IV
Ne Sit Ancillae Tibi Amor Pudori

There's just a twinkle in your eye
That seems to say I might, if I
Were only bold enough to try
An arm about your waist.

I hear, too, as you come and go,
That pretty nervous laugh, you know;
And then your cap is always so
Coquettishly displaced.

Your cap! the word's profanely said,
That little topknot, white and red,
That quaintly crowns your graceful head,
No bigger than a flower,

You set with such a witching art,
And so provocatively smart,
I'd like to wear it on my heart,
An order for an hour!

333

O graceful housemaid, tall and fair,
I love your shy imperial air,
And always loiter on the stair,
When you are going by.

A strict reserve the fates demand;
But, when to let you pass I stand,
Sometimes by chance I touch your hand
And sometimes catch your eye.

V
Poem for a Class Re-union

Whether we like it, or don't,
There's a sort of a bond in the fact
That we all by one master were taught,
By one master were bullied and whackt.
And now all the more, when we see
Our class in so shrunken a state
And we, who were seventy-two,
Diminished to seven or eight.

One has been married; and one
Has taken to letters for bread,
Several are over the seas;
And some I imagine are dead.
And that is the reason, you see,
Why, as I have the honour to state,
We, who were seventy-two,
Are now only seven or eight.

One took to heretical views,
And one, they inform me, to drink;
Some construct fortunes in trade,
Some starve in professions, I think.

334

But one way or other alas!
Through the culpable action of Fate
We, who were seventy-two,
Are now shrunken to seven or eight.

So, whether we like it or not,
Let us own there's a bond in the past,
And, since we were playmates at school,
Continue good friends to the last.
The roll-book is closed in the room,
The clacken is gone with the slate,
We, who were seventy-two,
Are now only seven or eight.

We shall never, our books on our back,
Trudge off in the morning again,
To the slide at the Janitor's door,
By the ambush of cads in the lane!
We shall never be sent for the tawse,
Nor lose places for coming too late;
We shall never be seventy-two,
Who now are but seven or eight!

We shall never have peeries for luck,
We shall never be strapped by Maclean,
We shall never take Lothian down,
Nor ever be schoolboys again.
But still for the sake of the past,
For the love of the days of lang syne
The remnant of seventy-two
Shall rally together to dine.

335

VI
Browning

Browning makes the verses:
Your servant the critique.
Browning wouldn't sing at all:
I fancy I could speak.
Although the book was clever
(To give the Deil his due)
I wasn't pleased with Browning
Nor he with my review.

VII
On an Inland Voyage

Who would think, herein to look,
That from these exiguous bounds,
I have dug a printed book
And a cheque for twenty pounds?

Thus do those who trust the Lord
Go rejoicing on their way
And receive a great reward
For having been so kind as lay.

Had the fun of the voyage
Had the sport of the boats
Who could have hoped in addition
The pleasure of fing'ring the notes?

336

Yes, sir, I wrote the book; I own the fact
It was, perhaps, sir, an unworthy act.
Have you perused it, sir?—You have?—indeed
Then between you and me there no debate is.
I did a silly act, but I was fee'd;
You did a sillier, and you did it gratis!

VIII
Dedication

To her, for I must still regard her
As feminine in her degree,
Who has been my unkind bombarder
Year after year, in grief and glee,
Year after year, with oaken tree;
And yet between whiles my laudator
In terms astonishing to me:
To the Right Reverend the spectator
I here, a humble dedicator,
Bring the last apples from my tree.

In tones of love, in tones of warning
She hailed me through my brief career;
And kiss and buffet, night and morning,
Told me my grandmamma was near;
Whether she praised me high and clear
Through her unrivalled circulation,
Or, sanctimonious insincere
She damned me with a misquotation—
A chequered but a sweet relation,
Say, was it not, my granny dear?

337

Believe me, granny, altogether
Yours, though perhaps to your surprise.
Oft have you spruced my wounded feather,
Oft brought a light into my eyes—
For notice still the writer cries.
In any civil age or nation,
The book that is not talked of dies.
So that shall be my termination:
Whether in praise or execration,
Still, if you love me, criticise!

IX
On Some Ghostly Companions at A Spa

That was an evil day when I
To Strathpeffer drew anigh,
For there I found no human soul
But Ogres occupied the whole.

They had at first a human air
In coats and flannel underwear.
They rose and walked upon their feet
And filled their bellies full of meat.
They wiped their lips when they had done,
But they were Ogres every one.

Each issuing from his secret bower,
I marked them in the morning hour.
By limp and totter, lisp and droop,
I singled each one from the group.
I knew them all as they went by—
I knew them by their blasted eye!

338

Detested Ogres, from my sight
Depart to your congenial night!
From these fair vales, from this fair day,
Fleet, spectres, on your downward way,
Like changing figures in a dream,
To Muttonhole or Pittenweem!
As, by some harmony divine
The devils quartered in the swine,
If any baser place exist
In God's great registration list—
Some den with wallow and a trough—
Find it, ye ogres, and be off!

X
Brasheanna

Sonnets on Peter Brash, a publican, dedicated to Charles Baxter

I

We found him first as in the dells of May
The dreaming damsel finds the earliest flower;
Thoughtless we wandered in the evening hour;
Aimless and pleased we went our random way:
In the foot-haunted city in the night,
Among the alternate lamps, we went and came
Till, like a humourous thunderbolt, that name,
The hated name of Brash, assailed our sight.
We saw, we paused, we entered, seeking gin.
His wrath, like a huge breaker on the beach,
Broke instant forth. He on the counter beat
In his infantile fury; and his feet
Danced impotent wrath upon the floor within.
Still as we fled, we heard his idiot screech.

339

II

We found him and we lost. The glorious Brash
Fell as the cedar on the mountain side
When the resounding thunders far and wide
Redoubling grumble, and the instant flash
Divides the night a moment and is gone;
He fell not unremembered nor unwept;
And the dim shop where that great hero slept
Is sacred still. We, steering past the Tron
And past the College southward, and thy square
Fitz-Symon! reach at last that holier clime,
And do with tears behold that pot-house, where
Brash the divine once ministered in drink,
Where Brash, the Beershop Hornet, bowed by time,
In futile anger grinned across the zinc.

III

There let us often wend our pensive way,
There often pausing celebrate the past;
For though indeed our Brash be dead at last,
Perchance his spirit, in some minor way,
Nor pure immortal nor entirely dead,
Contrives upon the farther shore of death
To pick a rank subsistence, and for breath
Breathes ague, and drinks creosote of lead,
There, on the way to that infernal den,
Where burst the flames forth thickly, and the sky
Flares horrid through the murk methinks he doles
Damned liquors out to Hellward-faring souls,
And as his impotent anger ranges high
Gibbers and gurgles at the shades of men.

340

IV

Alas! that while the beautiful and strong,
The pious and the wise, the grave and gay,
All journey downward by one common way,
Bewailed and honoured yet with flowers and song,
There must come crowding with that serious throng,
Jostling the ranks of that discreet array,
Infirm and scullion spirits of decay,
The dull, the droll, the random and the wrong.
An ape in church, an artificial limb
Tacked to a marble god serene and blind—
For such as Brash, high death was not designed,
That canonising rite was not for him;
Nor where the Martyr and the Hero trod
Should idiot Brash go hobbling up to God.

V

To Goodness or Greatness: to be good and die,
Or to be great and live forever great:
To be the unknown Smith that saves the state
And blooms unhonoured by the public eye:
To be the unknown Robinson or Brown
Whose piping virtues perish in the mud
Or triumphing in blasphemy and blood,
The imperial pirate, pickled in renown:
Unfaltering Brash the latter number chose
Of this eterne antithesis: and still
The flower of his immortal memory blows
Where'er the spirits of the loathed repose
Where'er the trophy of the gibbet hill
Dejects the traveller and collects the crows.

341

XI
To A. G. Dew-Smith

In return for a box of cigarettes

Figure me to yourself, I pray—
A man of my peculiar cut—
Apart from dancing and deray,
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;

342

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, unhelpt, with rusty dirk,
I vow that I could wholly smite;

A river that from morn to night
Down all the valley plays the fool;
Nor once she pauses in her flight;
Nor knows the comforts of a pool.

But still keeps up, by straight or bend,
The self-same pace that she 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 like a bull;
There, as a man might wipe his face,
Lie, pleased and panting, in a pool.

343

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 befal,
Is still to sit on one's behind
And, having duly moistened all,
Smoke with an unperturbèd mind.

So sitting, so engaged, I write;
So puffing, so puffed up, I sing,
In modest climates of delight
And from the islands of the spring:

My manner, even as I can:
My matter—Frenchly—to agree
As from a much delighted man,
A gift unspeakable to me.

XII

[Long time I lay in little ease]

Long time I lay in little ease
Where, paced by the Turanian,
Marseilles, the many-masted, sees
The blue Mediterranean.

Now songful in the hour of sport,
Now riotous for wages,
She camps around her ancient port
An ancient of the ages.

344

Algerian airs through all the place
Unconquerably sally;
Incomparable women pace
The shadows of the alley.

And high o'er dock and graving yard
And where the sky is paler,
The golden virgin of the guard
Shines, beckoning the sailor.

She hears the city roar on high,
Thief, prostitute and banker;
She sees the masted vessels lie
Immovably at anchor.

She sees the snowy islets dot
The sea's immortal azure,
And If, that castellated spot,
Tower, turret and embrazure.

There Dantès pined; and here today
Behold me his successor:
For here imprisoned long I lay
In pledge for a professor.

XIII

[My wife and I, in our romantic cot]

My wife and I, in our romantic cot,
The world forgetting, by the world forgot,
High as the gods upon Olympus dwell,
Pleased with what things we have, and pleased as well
To wait in hope for those which we have not.

345

She burns in ardour for a horse to trot;
I stake my votive prayers upon a yacht;
Which shall be first remembered, who can tell,
My wife or I?

Harvests of flowers o'er all our garden-plot,
She dreams; and I to enrich a darker spot
My unprovided cellar; both to swell
Our narrow cottage huge as a hotel,
Where portly friends may come and share the lot—
Of wife and I.

XIV

[At morning on the garden seat]

At morning on the garden seat
I dearly love to drink and eat.
To drink and eat, to drink and sing,
At morning, in the time of Spring.
In winter honest men retire
And sup their possets by the fire,
But when the Spring comes round, you see,
The garden breakfast pleases me.
The morning star that melts on high
The fires that cleanse the changing sky,
The air that smells so new and sweet,
All put me in the cue to eat
A pot at five, a crust at four,
At half past six a pottle more.

346

XV

[Last night we had a thunderstorm in style.]

Last night we had a thunderstorm in style.
The wild lightning streaked the airs,
As though my God fell down a pair of stairs.
The thunder boomed and bounded all the while;
All cried and sat by water-side and stile—
To mop our brow had been our chief of cares.
I lay in bed with a Voltairean smile,
The terror of good, simple guilty pairs,
And made this rondeau in ironic style,
Last night we had a thunderstorm in style.
Our God the Father fell down-stairs,
The stark blue lightning went its flight, the while,
The very rain you might have heard a mile—
The strenuous faithful buckled to their prayers.

XVI
To Time

God of the business man, to thee,
O Time, I bow the suppliant knee,
And to thy dwarfish temple bring
My books as a peace-offering.
Thou cleaver of the crowded woods,
That drivest from green solitudes
The sylvan deer; and dost conspire,
Or for the shipyard or the fire,
The fall of woodland colonnades;
O time, that lovest in the glades
To cheer the ringing areas din
And let the untrammelled sunshine in:

347

Think but once more, nor let this be,
Thy servant should survive to see
His native country and his head
Lie both alike disforested.

XVII
Fragment

[Thou strainest through the mountain fern]

Thou strainest through the mountain fern,
A most exiguously thin
Burn.
For all thy foam, for all thy din,
Thee shall the pallid lake inurn,
With well-a-day for Mr. Swin-
Burne!
Take then this quarto in thy fin
And, O thou stoker huge and stern,
The whole affair, outside and in,
Burn!
But save the true poetic kin,
The works of Mr. Robert Burn!
And William Wordsworth upon Tin-
Tern!

XVIII
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.

348

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.

XIX
Rhymes to Henley

I

O Henley, in my hours of ease
You may say anything you please,
But when I join the Muses' revel,
Begad, I wish you at the devil!
In vain my verse I plane and bevel,
Like Banville's rhyming devotees;
In vain by many an artful swivel
Lug in my meaning by degrees;
I'm sure to hear my Henley cavil;
And grovelling prostrate on my knees,
Devote his body to the seas,
His correspondence to the devil.

II

Dear Henley, with a pig's snout on
I am starting for London,
Where I likely shall arrive
On Saturday, if still alive:
Perhaps your pirate doctor might
See me on Sunday? If all's right,
I should then lunch with you and with she
Who's dearer to you than you are to me.

349

I shall remain but little time
In London, as a wretched clime,
But not so wretched (for none are)
As that of beastly old Braemar.
My doctor sends me skipping. I
Have many facts to meet your eye.
My pig's snout now upon my face:
And I inhale with fishy grace,
My gills outflapping right and left,
Ol. pin. sylvest. I am bereft
Of a great deal of charm by this—
Not quite the bull's eye for a kiss—
But like the gnome of olden time
Or bogey in a pantomime.
For ladies' love I once was fit,
But now am rather out of it.
Where'er I go, revolted curs
Snap round my military spurs;
The children all retire in fits
And scream their bellowses to bits.
Little I care: the worst's been done:
Now let the cold impoverished sun
Drop frozen from his orbit; let
Fury and fire, cold, wind, and wet,
And cataclysmal mad reverses
Rage through the federate universes;
Let Lawson triumph, cakes and ale,
Whiskey and hock and claret fail;
Tobacco, love, and letters perish,
With all that any man could cherish:
You it may touch, not me. I dwell
Too deep already—deep in hell;
And nothing can befall, O damn!
To make me uglier than I am.

350

III

My indefatigable pen
I here lay down forever. Men
Have used, and left me, and forgot;
Men are entirely off the spot;
Men are a blague and an abuse;
And I commit them to the deuce!

IV

I had companions, I had friends,
I had of whisky various blends.
The whisky was all drunk; and lo!
The friends were gone for evermo!

V

All men are rot: but there are two—
Sidney, the oblivious Slade, and you—
Who from that rabble stand confest
Ten million times the rottenest.

VI

When I was sick and safe in gaol
I thought my friends would never fail.
One wrote me nothing; t'other bard
Sent me an insolent post card.

351

VII

My letters fail, I learn with grief, to please
Proud spirits that sit and read them at their ease
Not recking how, from an exhausted mind,
By wheel and pulley, tug and strain and grind,
These humble efforts are expressed, like cheese.

VIII

We dwell in these melodious days
When every author trolls his lays;
And all, except myself and you,
Must up and print the nonsense, too.
Why then, if this be so indeed,
If adamantine walls recede
And old Apollo's gardens gape
For Arry and the grinder's ape;
I too may enter in perchance
Where paralytic graces dance,
And cheering on each tottering set
Blow my falsetto flageolet.

[_]

Section IX is in French verse and is thus omitted.

352

X. 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 Bŭshes
May wanton on the spray;
But vain for him who tushes
The brightness of the day!

353

The frog among the rushes
Sits singing in the blue.
By 'r la'ki!n 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 pŭshes
Beyond the river dark—
'Las, to the man who tushes,
‘Tush’ shall be God's remark!

XX
Epitaphs

I

Here lies a man who never did
Anything but what he was bid;
Who lived his life in paltry ease,
And died of commonplace disease.

354

II

The angler rose, he took his rod,
He kneeled and made his prayers to God.
The living God sat overhead:
The angler tripped, the eels were fed.

III. ON HIMSELF

He may have been this and that,
A drunkard or a guttler;
He may have been bald and fat—
At least he kept a butler.

He may have sprung from ill or well,
From Emperor or sutler;
He may be burning now in Hell—
On earth he kept a butler.

IV. ON HIMSELF AT THE PIANO

Where is now the Père Martini?
Where is Bumptious Boccherini?
Where are Hertz and Crotch and Batch?
—Safe in bed in Colney Hatch?

355

XXI
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:

356

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!

XXII
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.

Eructavit cor meum

My heart was inditing a goodly matter about Adela Chart

Though oft I've been touched by the volatile dart,
To none have I grovelled but Adela Chart,

357

There are passable ladies, no question, in art—
But where is the marrow of Adela Chart?
I dreamed that to Tyburn I passed in the cart—
I dreamed I was married to Adela Chart:
From the first I awoke with a palpable start,
The second dumbfoundered me, Adela Chart!

XXIII
Athole Brose

Willie an' I cam doun by Blair
And in by Tullibardine,
The Rye were at the waterside,
An' bee-skeps in the garden.
I saw the reek of a private still—
Says I, ‘Gud Lord, I thank ye!’
As Willie and I cam in by Blair
And out by Killiecrankie.

Ye hinny bees, ye smuggler lads,
Thou, Muse, the bard's protector,
I never kent what Rye was for
Till I had drunk the nectar!
And shall I never drink it mair?
Gud troth, I beg your pardon!
The neist time I come doun by Blair
And in by Tullibardine.