Underwoods
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Underwoods by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Scanned and proofed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Underwoods
Of all my verse, like not a single line;
But like my title, for it is not mine.
That title from a better man I stole:
Ah, how much better, had I stol'n the whole!
DEDICATION
THERE are men and classes of men that stand above the
common herd: the soldier, the sailor and the shepherd not
unfrequently; the artist rarely; rarely still, the clergyman;
the physician almost as a rule. He is the flower (such as it
is) of our civilisation; and when that stage of man is done
with, and only remembered to be marvelled at in history, he
will be thought to have shared as little as any in the defects
of the period, and most notably exhibited the virtues of the
race. Generosity he has, such as is possible to those who
practise an art, never to those who drive a trade; discretion,
tested by a hundred secrets; tact, tried in a thousand
embarrassments; and what are more important, Heraclean
cheerfulness and courage. So it is that he brings air and
cheer into the sickroom, and often enough, though not so often
as he wishes, brings healing.
Gratitude is but a lame sentiment; thanks, when they are
expressed, are often more embarrassing than welcome; and yet I
must set forth mine to a few out of many doctors who have
brought me comfort and help: to Dr. Willey of San Francisco,
whose kindness to a stranger it must be as grateful to him, as
it is touching to me, to remember; to Dr. Karl Ruedi of Davos,
the good genius of the English in his frosty mountains; to Dr.
Herbert of Paris, whom I knew only for a week, and to Dr.
Caissot of Montpellier, whom I knew only for ten days, and who
have yet written their names deeply in my memory; to Dr.
Brandt of Royat; to Dr. Wakefield of Nice; to Dr. Chepmell,
whose visits make it a pleasure to be ill; to Dr. Horace
Dobell, so wise in counsel; to Sir Andrew Clark, so unwearied
in kindness and to that wise youth, my uncle, Dr. Balfour.
I forget as many as I remember; and I ask both to pardon
me, these for silence, those for inadequate speech. But one
name I have kept on purpose to the last, because it is a
household word with me, and because if I had not received
favours from so many hands and in so many quarters of the
world, it should have stood upon this page alone: that of my
friend Thomas Bodley Scott of Bournemouth. Will he accept
this, although shared among so many, for a dedication to
himself? and when next my ill-fortune (which has thus its
pleasant side) brings him hurrying to me when he would fain
sit down to meat or lie down to rest, will he care to remember
that he takes this trouble for one who is not fool enough to
be ungrateful?
R. L. S.
SKERRYVORE,
BOURNEMOUTH.
NOTE
THE human conscience has fled of late the troublesome
domain of conduct for what I should have supposed to be the
less congenial field of art: there she may now be said to
rage, and with special severity in all that touches dialect;
so that in every novel the letters of the alphabet are
tortured, and the reader wearied, to commemorate shades of
mis-pronunciation. Now spelling is an art of great difficulty
in my eyes, and I am inclined to lean upon the printer, even
in common practice, rather than to venture abroad upon new
quests. And the Scots tongue has an orthography of its own,
lacking neither "authority nor author." Yet the temptation is
great to lend a little guidance to the bewildered Englishman.
Some simple phonetic artifice might defend your verses from
barbarous mishandling, and yet not injure any vested interest.
So it seems at first; but there are rocks ahead. Thus, if I
wish the diphthong OU to have its proper value, I may write
OOR instead of OUR; many have done so and lived, and the
pillars of the universe remained unshaken. But if I did so,
and came presently to DOUN, which is the classical Scots
spelling of the English DOWN, I should begin to feel uneasy;
and if I went on a little farther, and came to a classical
Scots word, like STOUR or DOUR or CLOUR, I should know
precisely where I was - that is to say, that I was out of
sight of land on those high seas of spelling reform in which
so many strong swimmers have toiled vainly. To some the
situation is exhilarating; as for me, I give one bubbling cry
and sink. The compromise at which I have arrived is
indefensible, and I have no thought of trying to defend it.
As I have stuck for the most part to the proper spelling, I
append a table of some common vowel sounds which no one need
consult; and just to prove that I belong to my age and have in
me the stuff of a reformer, I have used modification marks
throughout. Thus I can tell myself, not without pride, that I
have added a fresh stumbling-block for English readers, and to
a page of print in my native tongue, have lent a new
uncouthness. SED NON NOBIS.
I note again, that among our new dialecticians, the local
habitat of every dialect is given to the square mile. I could
not emulate this nicety if I desired; for I simply wrote my
Scots as well as I was able, not caring if it hailed from
Lauderdale or Angus, from the Mearns or Galloway; if I had
ever heard a good word, I used it without shame; and when
Scots was lacking, or the rhyme jibbed, I was glad (like my
betters) to fall back on English. For all that, I own to a
friendly feeling for the tongue of Fergusson and of Sir
Walter, both Edinburgh men; and I confess that Burns has
always sounded in my ear like something partly foreign. And
indeed I am from the Lothians myself; it is there I heard the
language spoken about my childhood; and it is in the drawling
Lothian voice that I repeat it to myself. Let the precisians
call my speech that of the Lothians. And if it be not pure,
alas! what matters it? The day draws near when this
illustrious and malleable tongue shall be quite forgotten; and
Burn's Ayrshire, and Dr. Macdonald's Aberdeen-awa', and
Scott's brave, metropolitan utterance will be all equally the
ghosts of speech. Till then I would love to have my hour as a
native Maker, and be read by my own countryfolk in our own
dying language: an ambition surely rather of the heart than of
the head, so restricted as it is in prospect of endurance, so
parochial in bounds of space.
BOOK I. In English
I - ENVOY
Go, little book, and wish to all
Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall,
A bin of wine, a spice of wit,
A house with lawns enclosing it,
A living river by the door,
A nightingale in the sycamore!
II - A SONG OF THE ROAD
The gauger walked with willing foot,
And aye the gauger played the flute;
And what should Master Gauger play
But OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY?
Whene'er I buckle on my pack
And foot it gaily in the track,
O pleasant gauger, long since dead,
I hear you fluting on ahead.
You go with me the self-same way -
The self-same air for me you play;
For I do think and so do you
It is the tune to travel to.
For who would gravely set his face
To go to this or t'other place?
There's nothing under Heav'n so blue
That's fairly worth the travelling to.
On every hand the roads begin,
And people walk with zeal therein;
But wheresoe'er the highways tend,
Be sure there's nothing at the end.
Then follow you, wherever hie
The travelling mountains of the sky.
Or let the streams in civil mode
Direct your choice upon a road;
For one and all, or high or low,
Will lead you where you wish to go;
And one and all go night and day
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY!
Forest of Montargis, 1878
III - THE CANOE SPEAKS
On the great streams the ships may go
About men's business to and fro.
But I, the egg-shell pinnace, sleep
On crystal waters ankle-deep:
I, whose diminutive design,
Of sweeter cedar, pithier pine,
Is fashioned on so frail a mould,
A hand may launch, a hand withhold:
I, rather, with the leaping trout
Wind, among lilies, in and out;
I, the unnamed, inviolate,
Green, rustic rivers, navigate;
My dipping paddle scarcely shakes
The berry in the bramble-brakes;
Still forth on my green way I wend
Beside the cottage garden-end;
And by the nested angler fare,
And take the lovers unaware.
By willow wood and water-wheel
Speedily fleets my touching keel;
By all retired and shady spots
Where prosper dim forget-me-nots;
By meadows where at afternoon
The growing maidens troop in June
To loose their girdles on the grass.
Ah! speedier than before the glass
The backward toilet goes; and swift
As swallows quiver, robe and shift
And the rough country stockings lie
Around each young divinity.
When, following the recondite brook,
Sudden upon this scene I look,
And light with unfamiliar face
On chaste Diana's bathing-place,
Loud ring the hills about and all
The shallows are abandoned. . . .
IV
It is the season now to go
About the country high and low,
Among the lilacs hand in hand,
And two by two in fairy land.
The brooding boy, the sighing maid,
Wholly fain and half afraid,
Now meet along the hazel'd brook
To pass and linger, pause and look.
A year ago, and blithely paired,
Their rough-and-tumble play they shared;
They kissed and quarrelled, laughed and cried,
A year ago at Eastertide.
With bursting heart, with fiery face,
She strove against him in the race;
He unabashed her garter saw,
That now would touch her skirts with awe.
Now by the stile ablaze she stops,
And his demurer eyes he drops;
Now they exchange averted sighs
Or stand and marry silent eyes.
And he to her a hero is
And sweeter she than primroses;
Their common silence dearer far
Than nightingale and mavis are.
Now when they sever wedded hands,
Joy trembles in their bosom-strands
And lovely laughter leaps and falls
Upon their lips in madrigals.
V - THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL
A NAKED HOUSE, A NAKED MOOR,
A SHIVERING POOL BEFORE THE DOOR,
A GARDEN BARE OF FLOWERS AND FRUIT
AND POPLARS AT THE GARDEN FOOT:
SUCH IS THE PLACE THAT I LIVE IN,
BLEAK WITHOUT AND BARE WITHIN.
Yet shall your ragged moor receive
The incomparable pomp of eve,
And the cold glories of the dawn
Behind your shivering trees be drawn;
And when the wind front place to place
Doth the unmoored cloud-galleons chase,
Your garden gloom and gleam again,
With leaping sun, with glancing rain.
Here shall the wizard moon ascend
The heavens, in the crimson end
Of day's declining splendour; here
The army of the stars appear.
The neighbour hollows dry or wet,
Spring shall with tender flowers beset;
And oft the morning muser see
Larks rising from the broomy lea,
And every fairy wheel and thread
Of cobweb dew-bediamonded.
When daisies go, shall winter time
Silver the simple grass with rime;
Autumnal frosts enchant the pool
And make the cart-ruts beautiful;
And when snow-bright the moor expands,
How shall your children clap their hands!
To make this earth our hermitage,
A cheerful and a changeful page,
God's bright and intricate device
Of days and seasons doth suffice.
VI - A VISIT FROM THE SEA
Far from the loud sea beaches
Where he goes fishing and crying,
Here in the inland garden
Why is the sea-gull flying?
Here are no fish to dive for;
Here is the corn and lea;
Here are the green trees rustling.
Hie away home to sea!
Fresh is the river water
And quiet among the rushes;
This is no home for the sea-gull
But for the rooks and thrushes.
Pity the bird that has wandered!
Pity the sailor ashore!
Hurry him home to the ocean,
Let him come here no more!
High on the sea-cliff ledges
The white gulls are trooping and crying,
Here among the rooks and roses,
Why is the sea-gull flying?
VII - TO A GARDENER
Friend, in my mountain-side demesne
My plain-beholding, rosy, green
And linnet-haunted garden-ground,
Let still the esculents abound.
Let first the onion flourish there,
Rose among roots, the maiden-fair,
Wine-scented and poetic soul
Of the capacious salad bowl.
Let thyme the mountaineer (to dress
The tinier birds) and wading cress,
The lover of the shallow brook,
From all my plots and borders look.
Nor crisp and ruddy radish, nor
Pease-cods for the child's pinafore
Be lacking; nor of salad clan
The last and least that ever ran
About great nature's garden-beds.
Nor thence be missed the speary heads
Of artichoke; nor thence the bean
That gathered innocent and green
Outsavours the belauded pea.
These tend, I prithee; and for me,
Thy most long-suffering master, bring
In April, when the linnets sing
And the days lengthen more and more
At sundown to the garden door.
And I, being provided thus.
Shall, with superb asparagus,
A book, a taper, and a cup
Of country wine, divinely sup.
La Solitude, Hyeres
VIII - TO MINNIE
(With a hand-glass)
A picture-frame for you to fill,
A paltry setting for your face,
A thing that has no worth until
You lend it something of your grace
I send (unhappy I that sing
Laid by awhile upon the shelf)
Because I would not send a thing
Less charming than you are yourself.
And happier than I, alas!
(Dumb thing, I envy its delight)
'Twill wish you well, the looking-glass,
And look you in the face to-night.
1869.
IX - TO K. DE M.
A lover, of the moorland bare
And honest country winds, you were;
The silver-skimming rain you took;
And loved the floodings of the brook,
Dew, frost and mountains, fire and seas,
Tumultuary silences,
Winds that in darkness fifed a tune,
And the high-riding, virgin moon.
And as the berry, pale and sharp,
Springs on some ditch's counterscarp
In our ungenial, native north -
You put your frosted wildings forth,
And on the heath, afar from man,
A strong and bitter virgin ran.
The berry ripened keeps the rude
And racy flavour of the wood.
And you that loved the empty plain
All redolent of wind and rain,
Around you still the curlew sings -
The freshness of the weather clings -
The maiden jewels of the rain
Sit in your dabbled locks again.
X - TO N. V. DE G. S.
The unfathomable sea, and time, and tears,
The deeds of heroes and the crimes of kings
Dispart us; and the river of events
Has, for an age of years, to east and west
More widely borne our cradles. Thou to me
Art foreign, as when seamen at the dawn
Descry a land far off and know not which.
So I approach uncertain; so I cruise
Round thy mysterious islet, and behold
Surf and great mountains and loud river-bars,
And from the shore hear inland voices call.
Strange is the seaman's heart; he hopes, he fears;
Draws closer and sweeps wider from that coast;
Last, his rent sail refits, and to the deep
His shattered prow uncomforted puts back.
Yet as he goes he ponders at the helm
Of that bright island; where he feared to touch,
His spirit readventures; and for years,
Where by his wife he slumbers safe at home,
Thoughts of that land revisit him; he sees
The eternal mountains beckon, and awakes
Yearning for that far home that might have been.
XI - TO WILL. H. LOW
Youth now flees on feathered foot
Faint and fainter sounds the flute,
Rarer songs of gods; and still
Somewhere on the sunny hill,
Or along the winding stream,
Through the willows, flits a dream;
Flits but shows a smiling face,
Flees but with so quaint a grace,
None can choose to stay at home,
All must follow, all must roam.
This is unborn beauty: she
Now in air floats high and free,
Takes the sun and breaks the blue; -
Late with stooping pinion flew
Raking hedgerow trees, and wet
Her wing in silver streams, and set
Shining foot on temple roof:
Now again she flies aloof,
Coasting mountain clouds and kiss't
By the evening's amethyst.
In wet wood and miry lane,
Still we pant and pound in vain;
Still with leaden foot we chase
Waning pinion, fainting face;
Still with gray hair we stumble on,
Till, behold, the vision gone!
Where hath fleeting beauty led?
To the doorway of the dead.
Life is over, life was gay:
We have come the primrose way.
XII - TO MRS. WILL. H. LOW
Even in the bluest noonday of July,
There could not run the smallest breath of wind
But all the quarter sounded like a wood;
And in the chequered silence and above
The hum of city cabs that sought the Bois,
Suburban ashes shivered into song.
A patter and a chatter and a chirp
And a long dying hiss - it was as though
Starched old brocaded dames through all the house
Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky
Even in a wink had over-brimmed in rain.
Hark, in these shady parlours, how it talks
Of the near Autumn, how the smitten ash
Trembles and augurs floods! O not too long
In these inconstant latitudes delay,
O not too late from the unbeloved north
Trim your escape! For soon shall this low roof
Resound indeed with rain, soon shall your eyes
Search the foul garden, search the darkened rooms,
Nor find one jewel but the blazing log.
12 Rue Vernier, Paris
XIII - TO H. F. BROWN
(Written during a dangerous sickness.)
I sit and wait a pair of oars
On cis-Elysian river-shores.
Where the immortal dead have sate,
`Tis mine to sit and meditate;
To re-ascend life's rivulet,
Without remorse, without regret;
And sing my ALMA GENETRIX
Among the willows of the Styx.
And lo, as my serener soul
Did these unhappy shores patrol,
And wait with an attentive ear
The coming of the gondolier,
Your fire-surviving roll I took,
Your spirited and happy book; (1)
Whereon, despite my frowning fate,
It did my soul so recreate
That all my fancies fled away
On a Venetian holiday.
Now, thanks to your triumphant care,
Your pages clear as April air,
The sails, the bells, the birds, I know,
And the far-off Friulan snow;
The land and sea, the sun and shade,
And the blue even lamp-inlaid.
For this, for these, for all, O friend,
For your whole book from end to end -
For Paron Piero's muttonham -
I your defaulting debtor am.
Perchance, reviving, yet may I
To your sea-paven city hie,
And in FELZE, some day yet
Light at your pipe my cigarette.
(1) LIFE ON THE LAGOONS, by H. F. Brown, originally
burned in the fire at
Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench. and Co.'s.
XIV - TO ANDREW LANG
Dear Andrew, with the brindled hair,
Who glory to have thrown in air,
High over arm, the trembling reed,
By Ale and Kail, by Till and Tweed:
An equal craft of band you show
The pen to guide, the fly to throw:
I count you happy starred; for God,
When He with inkpot and with rod
Endowed you, bade your fortune lead
Forever by the crooks of Tweed,
Forever by the woods of song
And lands that to the Muse belong;
Or if in peopled streets, or in
The abhorred pedantic sanhedrim,
It should be yours to wander, still
Airs of the morn, airs of the hill,
The plovery Forest and the seas
That break about the Hebrides,
Should follow over field and plain
And find you at the window pane;
And you again see hill and peel,
And the bright springs gush at your heel.
So went the fiat forth, and so
Garrulous like a brook you go,
With sound of happy mirth and sheen
Of daylight - whether by the green
You fare that moment, or the gray;
Whether you dwell in March or May;
Or whether treat of reels and rods
Or of the old unhappy gods:
Still like a brook your page has shone,
And your ink sings of Helicon.
XV - ET TU IN ARCADIA VIXISTI
(TO R. A. M. S.)
In ancient tales, O friend, thy spirit dwelt;
There, from of old, thy childhood passed; and there
High expectation, high delights and deeds,
Thy fluttering heart with hope and terror moved.
And thou hast heard of yore the Blatant Beast,
And Roland's horn, and that war-scattering shout
Of all-unarmed Achilles, aegis-crowned
And perilous lands thou sawest, sounding shores
And seas and forests drear, island and dale
And mountain dark. For thou with Tristram rod'st
Or Bedevere, in farthest Lyonesse.
Thou hadst a booth in Samarcand, whereat
Side-looking Magians trafficked; thence, by night,
An Afreet snatched thee, and with wings upbore
Beyond the Aral mount; or, hoping gain,
Thou, with a jar of money, didst embark,
For Balsorah, by sea. But chiefly thou
In that clear air took'st life; in Arcady
The haunted, land of song; and by the wells
Where most the gods frequent. There Chiron old,
In the Pelethronian antre, taught thee lore:
The plants, he taught, and by the shining stars
In forests dim to steer. There hast thou seen
Immortal Pan dance secret in a glade,
And, dancing, roll his eyes; these, where they fell,
Shed glee, and through the congregated oaks
A flying horror winged; while all the earth
To the god's pregnant footing thrilled within.
Or whiles, beside the sobbing stream, he breathed,
In his clutched pipe unformed and wizard strains
Divine yet brutal; which the forest heard,
And thou, with awe; and far upon the plain
The unthinking ploughman started and gave ear.
Now things there are that, upon him who sees,
A strong vocation lay; and strains there are
That whoso hears shall hear for evermore.
For evermore thou hear'st immortal Pan
And those melodious godheads, ever young
And ever quiring, on the mountains old.
What was this earth, child of the gods, to thee?
Forth from thy dreamland thou, a dreamer, cam'st
And in thine ears the olden music rang,
And in thy mind the doings of the dead,
And those heroic ages long forgot.
To a so fallen earth, alas! too late,
Alas! in evil days, thy steps return,
To list at noon for nightingales, to grow
A dweller on the beach till Argo come
That came long since, a lingerer by the pool
Where that desired angel bathes no more.
As when the Indian to Dakota comes,
Or farthest Idaho, and where he dwelt,
He with his clan, a humming city finds;
Thereon awhile, amazed, he stares, and then
To right and leftward, like a questing dog,
Seeks first the ancestral altars, then the hearth
Long cold with rains, and where old terror lodged,
And where the dead. So thee undying Hope,
With all her pack, hunts screaming through the years:
Here, there, thou fleeest; but nor here nor there
The pleasant gods abide, the glory dwells.
That, that was not Apollo, not the god.
This was not Venus, though she Venus seemed
A moment. And though fair yon river move,
She, all the way, from disenchanted fount
To seas unhallowed runs; the gods forsook
Long since her trembling rushes; from her plains
Disconsolate, long since adventure fled;
And now although the inviting river flows,
And every poplared cape, and every bend
Or willowy islet, win upon thy soul
And to thy hopeful shallop whisper speed;
Yet hope not thou at all; hope is no more;
And O, long since the golden groves are dead
The faery cities vanished from the land!
XVI - TO W. E. HENLEY
The year runs through her phases; rain and sun,
Springtime and summer pass; winter succeeds;
But one pale season rules the house of death.
Cold falls the imprisoned daylight; fell disease
By each lean pallet squats, and pain and sleep
Toss gaping on the pillows.
But O thou!
Uprise and take thy pipe. Bid music flow,
Strains by good thoughts attended, like the spring
The swallows follow over land and sea.
Pain sleeps at once; at once, with open eyes,
Dozing despair awakes. The shepherd sees
His flock come bleating home; the seaman hears
Once more the cordage rattle. Airs of home!
Youth, love and roses blossom; the gaunt ward
Dislimns and disappears, and, opening out,
Shows brooks and forests, and the blue beyond
Of mountains.
Small the pipe; but oh! do thou,
Peak-faced and suffering piper, blow therein
The dirge of heroes dead; and to these sick,
These dying, sound the triumph over death.
Behold! each greatly breathes; each tastes a joy
Unknown before, in dying; for each knows
A hero dies with him - though unfulfilled,
Yet conquering truly - and not dies in vain
So is pain cheered, death comforted; the house
Of sorrow smiles to listen. Once again -
O thou, Orpheus and Heracles, the bard
And the deliverer, touch the stops again!
XVII - HENRY JAMES
Who comes to-night? We ope the doors in vain.
Who comes? My bursting walls, can you contain
The presences that now together throng
Your narrow entry, as with flowers and song,
As with the air of life, the breath of talk?
Lo, how these fair immaculate women walk
Behind their jocund maker; and we see
Slighted DE MAUVES, and that far different she,
GRESSIE, the trivial sphynx; and to our feast
DAISY and BARB and CHANCELLOR (she not least!)
With all their silken, all their airy kin,
Do like unbidden angels enter in.
But he, attended by these shining names,
Comes (best of all) himself - our welcome James.
XVIII - THE MIRROR SPEAKS
Where the bells peal far at sea
Cunning fingers fashioned me.
There on palace walls I hung
While that Consuelo sung;
But I heard, though I listened well,
Never a note, never a trill,
Never a beat of the chiming bell.
There I hung and looked, and there
In my gray face, faces fair
Shone from under shining hair.
Well I saw the poising head,
But the lips moved and nothing said;
And when lights were in the hall,
Silent moved the dancers all.
So awhile I glowed, and then
Fell on dusty days and men;
Long I slumbered packed in straw,
Long I none but dealers saw;
Till before my silent eye
One that sees came passing by.
Now with an outlandish grace,
To the sparkling fire I face
In the blue room at Skerryvore;
Where I wait until the door
Open, and the Prince of Men,
Henry James, shall come again.