New Poems, and Variant Readings. Robert Louis Stevenson
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This bosomful of songs
Than that the whole, hard world with one consent,
In one continuous chorus of applause
Poured forth for me and mine
The homage of ripe praise.
I write the finis here against my love,
This is my love’s last epitaph and tomb.
Here the road forks, and I
Go my way, far from yours.
THE OLD CHIMÆRAS, OLD RECEIPTS
The old Chimæras, old receipts
For making “happy land,”
The old political beliefs
Swam close before my hand.
The grand old communistic myths
In a middle state of grace,
Quite dead, but not yet gone to Hell,
And walking for a space,
Quite dead, and looking it, and yet
All eagerness to show
The Social-Contract forgeries
By Chatterton—Rousseau—
A hundred such as these I tried,
And hundreds after that,
I fitted Social Theories
As one would fit a hat!
Full many a marsh-fire lured me on,
I reached at many a star,
I reached and grasped them and behold—
The stump of a cigar!
All through the sultry sweltering day
The sweat ran down my brow,
The still plains heard my distant strokes
That have been silenced now.
This way and that, now up, now down,
I hailed full many a blow.
Alas! beneath my weary arm
The thicket seemed to grow.
I take the lesson, wipe my brow
And throw my axe aside,
And, sorely wearied, I go home
In the tranquil eventide.
And soon the rising moon, that lights
The eve of my defeat,
Shall see me sitting as of yore
By my old master’s feet.
PRELUDE
By sunny market-place and street
Wherever I go my drum I beat,
And wherever I go in my coat of red
The ribbons flutter about my head.
I seek recruits for wars to come—
For slaughterless wars I beat the drum,
And the shilling I give to each new ally
Is hope to live and courage to die.
I know that new recruits shall come
Wherever I beat the sounding drum,
Till the roar of the march by country and town
Shall shake the tottering Dagons down.
For I was objectless as they
And loitering idly day by day;
But whenever I heard the recruiters come,
I left my all to follow the drum.
THE VANQUISHED KNIGHT
I have left all upon the shameful field,
Honour and Hope, my God, and all but life;
Spurless, with sword reversed and dinted shield,
Degraded and disgraced, I leave the strife.
From him that hath not, shall there not be taken
E’en that he hath, when he deserts the strife?
Life left by all life’s benefits forsaken,
O keep the promise, Lord, and take the life.
TO THE COMMISSIONERS OF NORTHERN LIGHTS
I send to you, commissioners,
A paper that may please ye, sirs
(For troth they say it might be worse
An’ I believe’t)
And on your business lay my curse
Before I leav’t.
I thocht I’d serve wi’ you, sirs, yince,
But I’ve thocht better of it since;
The maitter I will nowise mince,
But tell ye true:
I’ll service wi’ some ither prince,
An’ no wi’ you.
I’ve no been very deep, ye’ll think,
Cam’ delicately to the brink
An’ when the water gart me shrink
Straucht took the rue,
An’ didna stoop my fill to drink—
I own it true.
I kent on cape and isle, a light
Burnt fair an’ clearly ilka night;
But at the service I took fright,
As sune’s I saw,
An’ being still a neophite
Gaed straucht awa’.
Anither course I now begin,
The weeg I’ll cairry for my sin,
The court my voice shall echo in,
An’—wha can tell?—
Some ither day I may be yin
O’ you mysel’.
THE RELIC TAKEN, WHAT AVAILS THE SHRINE?
The relic taken, what avails the shrine?
The locket, pictureless? O heart of mine,
Art thou not worse than that,
Still warm, a vacant nest where love once sat?
Her image nestled closer at my heart
Than cherished memories, healed every smart
And warmed it more than wine
Or the full summer sun in noon-day shine.
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