New Poems, and Variant Readings. Robert Louis Stevenson

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

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      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

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      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

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      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

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      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?

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      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.

      This