Songs of Travel, and Other Verses

Robert Louis Stevenson

Songs of Travel, and Other Verses

The following collection of verses, written at various times and places, principally after the author’s final departure from England in 1887, was sent home by him for publication some months before his death. He had tried them in several different orders and under several different titles, as “Songs and Notes of Travel,” “Posthumous Poems,” etc., and in the end left their naming and arrangement to the present editor, with the suggestion that they should be added as Book III. to future editions of “Underwoods.” This suggestion it is proposed to carry out; but in the meantime, for the benefit of those who possess “Underwoods” in its original form, it has been thought desirable to publish them separately in the present volume. They have already been included in the Edinburgh Edition of the author’s works.

S. C.

I – THE VAGABOND

(To an air of Schubert)Give to me the life I love,   Let the lave go by me,Give the jolly heaven above   And the byway nigh me.Bed in the bush with stars to see,   Bread I dip in the river —There’s the life for a man like me,   There’s the life for ever.Let the blow fall soon or late,   Let what will be o’er me;Give the face of earth around   And the road before me.Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,   Nor a friend to know me;All I seek, the heaven above   And the road below me.Or let autumn fall on me   Where afield I linger,Silencing the bird on tree,   Biting the blue finger.White as meal the frosty field —   Warm the fireside haven —Not to autumn will I yield,   Not to winter even!Let the blow fall soon or late,   Let what will be o’er me;Give the face of earth around,   And the road before me.Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,   Nor a friend to know me;All I ask, the heaven above   And the road below me.

II – YOUTH AND LOVE – I

Once only by the garden gate   Our lips we joined and parted.I must fulfil an empty fate   And travel the uncharted.Hail and farewell!  I must arise,   Leave here the fatted cattle,And paint on foreign lands and skies   My Odyssey of battle.The untented Kosmos my abode,   I pass, a wilful stranger:My mistress still the open road   And the bright eyes of danger.Come ill or well, the cross, the crown,   The rainbow or the thunder,I fling my soul and body down   For God to plough them under.

III – YOUTH AND LOVE – II

To the heart of youth the world is a highwayside.Passing for ever, he fares; and on either hand,Deep in the gardens golden pavilions hide,Nestle in orchard bloom, and far on the level landCall him with lighted lamp in the eventide.Thick as the stars at night when the moon is down,Pleasures assail him.  He to his nobler fateFares; and but waves a hand as he passes on,Cries but a wayside word to her at the garden gate,Sings but a boyish stave and his face is gone.

IV

In dreams, unhappy, I behold you stand      As heretofore:The unremembered tokens in your hand      Avail no more.No more the morning glow, no more the grace,      Enshrines, endears.Cold beats the light of time upon your face      And shows your tears.He came and went.  Perchance you wept a while      And then forgot.Ah me! but he that left you with a smile      Forgets you not.

V

She rested by the Broken Brook,   She drank of Weary Well,She moved beyond my lingering look,   Ah, whither none can tell!She came, she went.  In other lands,   Perchance in fairer skies,Her hands shall cling with other hands,   Her eyes to other eyes.She vanished.  In the sounding town,   Will she remember too?Will she recall the eyes of brown   As I recall the blue?

VI

The infinite shining heavens   Rose and I saw in the nightUncountable angel stars   Showering sorrow and light.I saw them distant as heaven,   Dumb and shining and dead,And the idle stars of the night   Were dearer to me than bread.Night after night in my sorrow   The stars stood over the sea,Till lo!  I looked in the dusk   And a star had come down to me.

VII

Plain as the glistering planets shine   When winds have cleaned the skies,Her love appeared, appealed for mine,   And wantoned in her eyes.Clear as the shining tapers burned   On Cytherea’s shrine,Those brimming, lustrous beauties turned,   And called and conquered mine.The beacon-lamp that Hero lit   No fairer shone on sea,No plainlier summoned will and wit,   Than hers encouraged me.I thrilled to feel her influence near,   I struck my flag at sight.Her starry silence smote my ear   Like sudden drums at night.I ran as, at the cannon’s roar,   The troops the ramparts man —As in the holy house of yore   The willing Eli ran.Here, lady, lo! that servant stands   You picked from passing men,And should you need nor heart nor hands   He bows and goes again.

VIII

To you, let snow and roses   And golden locks belong.These are the world’s enslavers,   Let these delight the throng.For her of duskier lustre   Whose favour still I wear,The snow be in her kirtle,   The rose be in her hair!The hue of highland rivers   Careering, full and cool,From sable on to golden,   From rapid on to pool —The hue of heather-honey,   The hue of honey-bees,Shall tinge her golden shoulder,   Shall gild her tawny knees.

IX

Let Beauty awake in the morn from beautiful dreams,      Beauty awake from rest!      Let Beauty awake      For Beauty’s sakeIn the hour when the birds awake in the brake      And the stars are bright in the west!Let Beauty awake in the eve from the slumber of day,      Awake in the crimson eve!      In the day’s dusk end      When the shades ascend,Let her wake to the kiss of a tender friend      To render again and receive!

X

I know not how it is with you —   I love the first and last,The whole field of the present view,   The whole flow of the past.One tittle of the things that are,   Nor you should change nor I —One pebble in our path – one star   In all our heaven of sky.Our lives, and every day and hour,   One symphony appear:One road, one garden – every flower   And every bramble dear.

XI

I will make you brooches and toys for your delightOf bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.I will make a palace fit for you and meOf green days in forests and blue days at sea.I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,And you shall wash your linen and keep your body whiteIn rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.And this shall be for music when no one else is near,The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!That only I remember, that only you admire,Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.

XII – WE HAVE LOVED OF YORE

(To an air of Diabelli)Berried brake and reedy island,   Heaven below, and only heaven above,Through the sky’s inverted azure   Softly swam the boat that bore our love.      Bright were your eyes as the day;      Bright ran the stream,      Bright hung the sky above.Days of April, airs of Eden,   How the glory died through golden hours,And the shining moon arising,   How the boat drew homeward filled with flowers!      Bright were your eyes in the night:      We have lived, my love —      O, we have loved, my love.Frost has bound our flowing river,   Snow has whitened all our island brake,And beside the winter fagot   Joan and Darby doze and dream and wake.      Still, in the river of dreams      Swims the boat of love —      Hark! chimes the falling oar!And again in winter evens   When on firelight dreaming fancy feeds,In those ears of agèd lovers   Love’s own river warbles in the reeds.      Love still the past, O my love!      We have lived of yore,      O, we have loved of yore.

XIII – MATER TRIUMPHANS

Son of my woman’s body, you go, to the drum and fife,To taste the colour of love and the other side of life —From out of the dainty the rude, the strong from out of the frail,Eternally through the ages from the female comes the male.The ten fingers and toes, and the shell-like nail on each,The eyes blind as gems and the tongue attempting speech;Impotent hands in my bosom, and yet they shall wield the sword!Drugged with slumber and milk, you wait the day of the Lord.Infant bridegroom, uncrowned king, unanointed priest,Soldier, lover, explorer, I see you nuzzle the breast.You that grope in my bosom shall load the ladies with rings,You, that came forth through the doors, shall burst the doors of kings.

XIV

Bright is the ring of words   When the right man rings them,Fair the fall of songs   When the singer sings them.Still they are carolled and said —   On wings they are carried —After the singer is dead   And the maker buried.Low as the singer lies   In the field of heather,Songs of his fashion bring   The swains together.And when the west is red   With the sunset embers,The lover lingers and sings   And the maid remembers.

XV

In the highlands, in the country places,Where the old plain men have rosy faces,And the young fair maidensQuiet eyes;Where essential silence cheers and blesses,And for ever in the hill-recessesHer more lovely musicBroods and dies.O to mount again where erst I haunted;Where the old red hills are bird-enchanted,And the low green meadowsBright with sward;And when even dies, the million-tinted,And the night has come, and planets glinted,Lo, the valley hollowLamp-bestarred!O to dream, O to awake and wanderThere, and with delight to take and render,Through the trance of silence,Quiet breath;Lo! for there, among the flowers and grasses,Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;Only winds and rivers,Life and death.

XVI

(To the tune of Wandering Willie)Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?   Hunger my driver, I go where I must.Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather;   Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust.Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree.   The true word of welcome was spoken in the door —Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight,   Kind folks of old, you come again no more.Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces,   Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland;   Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland,   Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed,   The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.Spring shall come, come again, calling up the moorfowl,   Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers;Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley,   Soft flow the stream through the even-flowing hours;Fair the day shine as it shone on my childhood —   Fair shine the day on the house with open door;Birds come and cry there and twitter in the chimney —   But I go for ever and come again no more.

XVII – WINTER

In rigorous hours, when down the iron laneThe redbreast looks in vainFor hips and haws,Lo, shining flowers upon my window-paneThe silver pencil of the winter draws.When all the snowy hillAnd the bare woods are still;When snipes are silent in the frozen bogs,And all the garden garth is whelmed in mire,Lo, by the hearth, the laughter of the logs —More fair than roses, lo, the flowers of fire!Saranac Lake.

XVIII

The stormy evening closes now in vain,Loud wails the wind and beats the driving rain,      While here in sheltered house      With fire-ypainted walls,      I hear the wind abroad,      I hark the calling squalls —‘Blow, blow,’ I cry, ‘you burst your cheeks in vain!Blow, blow,’ I cry, ‘my love is home again!’Yon ship you chase perchance but yesternightBore still the precious freight of my delight,      That here in sheltered house      With fire-ypainted walls,      Now hears the wind abroad,      Now harks the calling squalls.‘Blow, blow,’ I cry, ‘in vain you rouse the sea,My rescued sailor shares the fire with me!’

XIX – TO DR. HAKE

(On receiving a Copy of Verses)In the belovèd hour that ushers day,In the pure dew, under the breaking grey,One bird, ere yet the woodland quires awake,With brief réveillé summons all the brake:Chirp, chirp, it goes; nor waits an answer long;And that small signal fills the grove with song.Thus on my pipe I breathed a strain or two;It scarce was music, but ’twas all I knew.It was not music, for I lacked the art,Yet what but frozen music filled my heart?Chirp, chirp, I went, nor hoped a nobler strain;But Heaven decreed I should not pipe in vain,For, lo! not far from there, in secret dale,All silent, sat an ancient nightingale.My sparrow notes he heard; thereat awoke;And with a tide of song his silence broke.

XX – TO —

I knew thee strong and quiet like the hills;I knew thee apt to pity, brave to endure,In peace or war a Roman full equipt;And just I knew thee, like the fabled kingsWho by the loud sea-shore gave judgment forth,From dawn to eve, bearded and few of words.What, what, was I to honour thee?  A child;A youth in ardour but a child in strength,Who after virtue’s golden chariot-wheelsRuns ever panting, nor attains the goal.So thought I, and was sorrowful at heart.Since then my steps have visited that floodAlong whose shore the numerous footfalls cease,The voices and the tears of life expire.Thither the prints go down, the hero’s wayTrod large upon the sand, the trembling maid’s:Nimrod that wound his trumpet in the wood,And the poor, dreaming child, hunter of flowers,That here his hunting closes with the great:So one and all go down, nor aught returns.For thee, for us, the sacred river waits,For me, the unworthy, thee, the perfect friend;There Blame desists, there his unfaltering dogsHe from the chase recalls, and homeward rides;Yet Praise and Love pass over and go in.So when, beside that margin, I discardMy more than mortal weakness, and with theeThrough that still land unfearing I advance:If then at all we keep the touch of joyThou shalt rejoice to find me altered – I,O Felix, to behold thee still unchanged.

XXI

The morning drum-call on my eager earThrills unforgotten yet; the morning dewLies yet undried along my field of noon.But now I pause at whiles in what I do,And count the bell, and tremble lest I hear(My work untrimmed) the sunset gun too soon.

XXII

I have trod the upward and the downward slope;I have endured and done in days before;I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope;And I have lived and loved, and closed the door.

XXIII

He hears with gladdened heart the thunder   Peal, and loves the falling dew;He knows the earth above and under —   Sits and is content to view.He sits beside the dying ember,   God for hope and man for friend,Content to see, glad to remember,   Expectant of the certain end.

XXIV

Farewell, fair day and fading light!The clay-born here, with westward sight,Marks the huge sun now downward soar.Farewell.  We twain shall meet no more.Farewell.  I watch with bursting sighMy late contemned occasion die.I linger useless in my tent:Farewell, fair day, so foully spent!Farewell, fair day.  If any GodAt all consider this poor clod,He who the fair occasion sentPrepared and placed the impediment.Let him diviner vengeance take —Give me to sleep, give me to wakeGirded and shod, and bid me playThe hero in the coming day!

XXV – IF THIS WERE FAITH

God, if this were enough,That I see things bare to the buffAnd up to the buttocks in mire;That I ask nor hope nor hire,Nut in the husk,Nor dawn beyond the dusk,Nor life beyond death:God, if this were faith?Having felt thy wind in my faceSpit sorrow and disgrace,Having seen thine evil doomIn Golgotha and Khartoum,And the brutes, the work of thine hands,Fill with injustice landsAnd stain with blood the sea:If still in my veins the gleeOf the black night and the sunAnd the lost battle, run:If, an adept,The iniquitous lists I still acceptWith joy, and joy to endure and be withstood,And still to battle and perish for a dream of good:God, if that were enough?If to feel, in the ink of the slough,And the sink of the mire,Veins of glory and fireRun through and transpierce and transpire,And a secret purpose of glory in every part,And the answering glory of battle fill my heart;To thrill with the joy of girded menTo go on for ever and fail and go on again,And be mauled to the earth and arise,And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen with the eyes:With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at nightThat somehow the right is the rightAnd the smooth shall bloom from the rough:Lord, if that were enough?

XXVI – MY WIFE

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,Steel-true and blade-straight,The great artificerMade my mate.Honour, anger, valour, fire;A love that life could never tire,Death quench or evil stir,The mighty masterGave to her.Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,A fellow-farer true through life,Heart-whole and soul-freeThe august fatherGave to me.

XXVII – TO THE MUSE

Resign the rhapsody, the dream,   To men of larger reach;Be ours the quest of a plain theme,   The piety of speech.As monkish scribes from morning break   Toiled till the close of light,Nor thought a day too long to make   One line or letter bright:We also with an ardent mind,   Time, wealth, and fame forgot,Our glory in our patience find   And skim, and skim the pot:Till last, when round the house we hear   The evensong of birds,One corner of blue heaven appear   In our clear well of words.Leave, leave it then, muse of my heart!   Sans finish and sans frame,Leave unadorned by needless art   The picture as it came.

XXVIII – TO AN ISLAND PRINCESS

Since long ago, a child at home,I read and longed to rise and roam,Where’er I went, whate’er I willed,One promised land my fancy filled.Hence the long roads my home I made;Tossed much in ships; have often laidBelow the uncurtained sky my head,Rain-deluged and wind-buffeted:And many a thousand hills I crossedAnd corners turned – Love’s labour lost,Till, Lady, to your isle of sunI came, not hoping; and, like oneSnatched out of blindness, rubbed my eyes,And hailed my promised land with cries.Yes, Lady, here I was at last;Here found I all I had forecast:The long roll of the sapphire seaThat keeps the land’s virginity;The stalwart giants of the woodLaden with toys and flowers and food;The precious forest pouring outTo compass the whole town about;The town itself with streets of lawn,Loved of the moon, blessed by the dawn,Where the brown children all the dayKeep up a ceaseless noise of play,Play in the sun, play in the rain,Nor ever quarrel or complain; —And late at night, in the woods of fruit,Hark! do you hear the passing flute?I threw one look to either hand,And knew I was in Fairyland.And yet one point of being soI lacked.  For, Lady (as you know),Whoever by his might of hand,Won entrance into Fairyland,Found always with admiring eyesA Fairy princess kind and wise.It was not long I waited; soonUpon my threshold, in broad noon,Gracious and helpful, wise and good,The Fairy Princess Moë stood. 1 Tantira, Tahiti, Nov. 5, 1888.

XXIX – TO KALAKAUA

(With a present of a Pearl)

The Silver Ship, my King – that was her nameIn the bright islands whence your fathers came 2—The Silver Ship, at rest from winds and tides,Below your palace in your harbour rides:And the seafarers, sitting safe on shore,Like eager merchants count their treasures o’er.One gift they find, one strange and lovely thing,Now doubly precious since it pleased a king.The right, my liege, is ancient as the lyreFor bards to give to kings what kings admire.’Tis mine to offer for Apollo’s sake;And since the gift is fitting, yours to take.To golden hands the golden pearl I bring:The ocean jewel to the island king. Honolulu, Feb. 3, 1889.

XXX – TO PRINCESS KAIULANI

[Written in April to Kaiulani in the April of her age; and at Waikiki, within easy walk of Kaiulani’s banyan! When she comes to my land and her father’s, and the rain beats upon the window (as I fear it will), let her look at this page; it will be like a weed gathered and pressed at home; and she will remember her own islands, and the shadow of the mighty tree; and she will hear the peacocks screaming in the dusk and the wind blowing in the palms; and she will think of her father sitting there alone. – R. L. S.]

Forth from her land to mine she goes,The island maid, the island rose,Light of heart and bright of face:The daughter of a double race.Her islands here, in Southern sun,Shall mourn their Kaiulani gone,And I, in her dear banyan shade,Look vainly for my little maid.But our Scots islands far awayShall glitter with unwonted day,And cast for once their tempests byTo smile in Kaiulani’s eye.Honolulu.

XXXI – TO MOTHER MARYANNE

To see the infinite pity of this place,The mangled limb, the devastated face,The innocent sufferer smiling at the rod —A fool were tempted to deny his God.He sees, he shrinks.  But if he gaze again,Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!He marks the sisters on the mournful shores;And even a fool is silent and adores.Guest House, Kalawao, Molokai.

XXXII – IN MEMORIAM E. H

I knew a silver head was bright beyond compare,I knew a queen of toil with a crown of silver hair.Garland of valour and sorrow, of beauty and renown,Life, that honours the brave, crowned her himself with the crown.The beauties of youth are frail, but this was a jewel of age.Life, that delights in the brave, gave it himself for a gage.Fair was the crown to behold, and beauty its poorest part —At once the scar of the wound and the order pinned on the heart.The beauties of man are frail, and the silver lies in the dust,And the queen that we call to mind sleeps with the brave and the just;Sleeps with the weary at length; but, honoured and ever fair,Shines in the eye of the mind the crown of the silver hair.Honolulu.

XXXIII – TO MY WIFE

(A Fragment)Long must elapse ere you behold againGreen forest frame the entry of the lane —The wild lane with the bramble and the brier,The year-old cart-tracks perfect in the mire,The wayside smoke, perchance, the dwarfish huts,And ramblers’ donkey drinking from the ruts: —Long ere you trace how deviously it leads,Back from man’s chimneys and the bleating meadsTo the woodland shadow, to the sylvan hush,When but the brooklet chuckles in the brush —Back from the sun and bustle of the valeTo where the great voice of the nightingaleFills all the forest like a single room,And all the banks smell of the golden broom;So wander on until the eve descends.And back returning to your firelit friends,You see the rosy sun, despoiled of light,Hung, caught in thickets, like a schoolboy’s kite.Here from the sea the unfruitful sun shall rise,Bathe the bare deck and blind the unshielded eyes;The allotted hours aloft shall wheel in vainAnd in the unpregnant ocean plunge again.Assault of squalls that mock the watchful guard,And pluck the bursting canvas from the yard,And senseless clamour of the calm, at nightMust mar your slumbers.  By the plunging light,In beetle-haunted, most unwomanly bowerOf the wild-swerving cabin, hour by hour.Schooner ‘Equator.’

XXXIV – TO MY OLD FAMILIARS

Do you remember – can we e’er forget? —How, in the coiled-perplexities of youth,In our wild climate, in our scowling town,We gloomed and shivered, sorrowed, sobbed and feared?The belching winter wind, the missile rain,The rare and welcome silence of the snows,The laggard morn, the haggard day, the night,The grimy spell of the nocturnal town,Do you remember? – Ah, could one forget!As when the fevered sick that all night longListed the wind intone, and hear at lastThe ever-welcome voice of chanticleerSing in the bitter hour before the dawn, —With sudden ardour, these desire the day:So sang in the gloom of youth the bird of hope;So we, exulting, hearkened and desired.For lo! as in the palace porch of lifeWe huddled with chimeras, from within —How sweet to hear! – the music swelled and fell,And through the breach of the revolving doorsWhat dreams of splendour blinded us and fled!I have since then contended and rejoiced;Amid the glories of the house of lifeProfoundly entered, and the shrine beheld:Yet when the lamp from my expiring eyesShall dwindle and recede, the voice of loveFall insignificant on my closing ears,What sound shall come but the old cry of the windIn our inclement city? what returnBut the image of the emptiness of youth,Filled with the sound of footsteps and that voiceOf discontent and rapture and despair?So, as in darkness, from the magic lamp,The momentary pictures gleam and fadeAnd perish, and the night resurges – theseShall I remember, and then all forget.Apemama.