Modern British Poetry. Various

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Название Modern British Poetry
Автор произведения Various
Жанр Языкознание
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Издательство Языкознание
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4057664611864



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       Table of Contents

      The nightingale has a lyre of gold,

       The lark's is a clarion call,

       And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute,

       But I love him best of all.

      For his song is all of the joy of life,

       And we in the mad, spring weather,

       We two have listened till he sang

       Our hearts and lips together.

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      It was a bowl of roses:

       There in the light they lay,

       Languishing, glorying, glowing

       Their life away.

      And the soul of them rose like a presence,

       Into me crept and grew,

       And filled me with something—some one—

       O, was it you?

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      Behold me waiting—waiting for the knife.

       A little while, and at a leap I storm

       The thick sweet mystery of chloroform,

       The drunken dark, the little death-in-life.

       The gods are good to me: I have no wife,

       No innocent child, to think of as I near

       The fateful minute; nothing all-too dear

       Unmans me for my bout of passive strife.

      Yet I am tremulous and a trifle sick,

       And, face to face with chance, I shrink a little:

       My hopes are strong, my will is something weak.

       Here comes the basket? Thank you. I am ready

       But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle:

       You carry Cæsar and his fortunes—Steady!

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      A late lark twitters from the quiet skies;

       And from the west,

       Where the sun, his day's work ended,

       Lingers as in content,

       There falls on the old, grey city

       An influence luminous and serene,

       A shining peace.

      The smoke ascends

       In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires

       Shine, and are changed. In the valley

       Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,

       Closing his benediction,

       Sinks, and the darkening air

       Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night—

       Night with her train of stars

       And her great gift of sleep.

      So be my passing!

       My task accomplished and the long day done,

       My wages taken, and in my heart

       Some late lark singing, Let me be gathered to the quiet west, The sundown splendid and serene, Death.

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      Robert Louis Stevenson was born at Edinburgh in 1850. He was at first trained to be a lighthouse engineer, following the profession of his family. However, he studied law instead; was admitted to the bar in 1875; and abandoned law for literature a few years later.

      Though primarily a novelist, Stevenson has left one immortal book of poetry which is equally at home in the nursery and the library: A Child's Garden of Verses (first published in 1885) is second only to Mother Goose's own collection in its lyrical simplicity and universal appeal. Underwoods (1887) and Ballads (1890) comprise his entire poetic output. As a genial essayist, he is not unworthy to be ranked with Charles Lamb. As a romancer, his fame rests securely on Kidnapped, the unfinished masterpiece, Weir of Hermiston, and that eternal classic of youth, Treasure Island.

      Stevenson died after a long and dogged fight with his illness, in the Samoan Islands in 1894.

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      Great is the sun, and wide he goes

       Through empty heaven without repose;

       And in the blue and glowing days

       More thick than rain he showers his rays.

      Though closer still the blinds we pull

       To keep the shady parlour cool,

       Yet he will find a chink or two

       To slip his golden fingers through.

      The dusty attic, spider-clad,

       He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;

       And through the broken edge of tiles

       Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.

      Meantime his golden face around

       He bares to all the garden ground,

       And sheds a warm and glittering look

       Among the ivy's inmost nook.

      Above the hills, along the blue,

       Round the bright air with footing true,

       To please the child, to paint the rose,

       The gardener of the World, he goes.

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      Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,

       A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;

       Blinks but an hour or two; and then,

       A blood-red orange, sets again.

      Before the stars have left the skies,

       At morning in the dark I rise;

       And shivering in my nakedness,

       By the cold candle, bathe and dress.

      Close by the jolly fire I sit

       To warm my frozen bones a bit;

       Or with a reindeer-sled, explore

       The colder countries round the door.

      When to go out, my nurse doth wrap

       Me in my comforter and cap;