Robert Louis Stevenson

Underwoods

UNDERWOODS

BOOK I: IN ENGLISH

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!

 

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 selfsame way—

The selfsame 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.

 

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 fairyland.

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.

 

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 from 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.

 

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 rooks and roses,

Why is the sea-gull flying?

 

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, Hyères.

 

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 a while 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.

TO K. de M.

A lover of the moorland bare

And honest country winds you were;

The silver-skimming rain you took;

And love 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.