Robert Louis Stevenson (रॉबर्ट लुइस स्टीवेन्सन)

GOD gave to me a child in part,Yet wholly gave the father's heart.

Child of my soul, O whither now,Unborn, unmothered, goest thou?.

You came, you went, and no man wist,Hapless, my child, no breast you kist.

On no dear knees, a privileged babbler, clomb,Nor knew the kindly feel of home.

My voice may reach you, O my dear-,A father's voice perhaps the child may hear.

And, pitying, you may turn your view,On that poor father whom you never knew.

Alas! alone he sits, who then,Immortal among mortal men.

Sat hand in hand with love, and all day through,With your dear mother wondered over you.

SINCE thou hast given me this good hope, O God,That while my footsteps tread the flowery sod.

And the great woods embower me, and white dawn,And purple even sweetly lead me on.

From day to day, and night to night, O God,My life shall no wise miss the light of love.

But ever climbing, climb above,Man's one poor star, man's supine lands.

Into the azure steadfastness of death,My life shall no wise lack the light of love.

My hands not lack the loving touch of hands,But day by day, while yet I draw my breath.

And day by day, unto my last of years,I shall be one that has a perfect friend.

Her heart shall taste my laughter and my tears,And her kind eyes shall lead me to the end.

MEN are Heaven's piers; they evermore,Unwearying bear the skyey floor.

Man's theatre they bear with ease,Unfrowning cariatides!.

I, for my wife, the sun uphold,Or, dozing, strike the seasons cold.

She, on her side, in fairy-wise,Deals in diviner mysteries.

By spells to make the fuel burn,And keep the parlour warm, to turn.

Water to wine, and stones to bread,By her unconquered hero-head.

A naked Adam, naked Eve,Alone the primal bower we weave.

Sequestered in the seas of life,A Crusoe couple, man and wife.

With all our good, with all our will,Our unfrequented isle we fill.

And victor in day's petty wars,Each for the other lights the stars.

Come then, my Eve, and to and fro,Let us about our garden go.

And, grateful-hearted, hand in hand,Revisit all our tillage land.

And marvel at our strange estate,For hooded ruin at the gate.

Sits watchful, and the angels fear,To see us tread so boldly here.

Meanwhile, my Eve, with flower and grass,Our perishable days we pass.

Far more the thorn observe - and see,How our enormous sins go free -.

Nor less admire, beside the rose,How far a little virtue goes.

Children, you are very little,And your bones are very brittle.

If you would grow great and stately,You must try to walk sedately.

You must still be bright and quiet,And content with simple diet.

And remain, through all bewild'ring,Innocent and honest children.

Happy hearts and happy faces,Happy play in grassy places--.

That was how in ancient ages,Children grew to kings and sages.

But the unkind and the unruly,And the sort who eat unduly.

They must never hope for glory--,Theirs is quite a different story!.

Cruel children, crying babies,All grow up as geese and gabies.

Hated, as their age increases,By their nephews and their nieces.

FLOWER god, god of the spring, beautiful, bountiful,Cold-dyed shield in the sky, lover of versicles.

Here I wander in April,Cold, grey-headed; and still to my.

Heart, Spring comes with a bound, Spring the deliverer,Spring, song-leader in woods, chorally resonant.

Spring, flower-planter in meadows,Child-conductor in willowy.

Fields deep dotted with bloom, daisies and crocuses,Here that child from his heart drinks of eternity.

O child, happy are children!,She still smiles on their innocence.

She, dear mother in God, fostering violets,Fills earth full of her scents, voices and violins.

Thus one cunning in music,Wakes old chords in the memory.

Thus fair earth in the Spring leads her performances,One more touch of the bow, smell of the virginal.

Green - one more, and my bosom,Feels new life with an ecstasy.

WHETHER upon the garden seat,You lounge with your uplifted feet.

Under the May's whole Heaven of blue,Or whether on the sofa you.

No grown up person being by,Do some soft corner occupy.

Take you this volume in your hands,And enter into other lands.

For lo! (as children feign) suppose,You, hunting in the garden rows.

Or in the lumbered attic, or,The cellar - a nail-studded door.

And dark, descending stairway found,That led to kingdoms underground.

There standing, you should hear with ease,Strange birds a-singing, or the trees.

Swing in big robber woods, or bells,On many fairy citadels.

There passing through (a step or so -,Neither mamma nor nurse need know!).

From your nice nurseries you would pass,Like Alice through the Looking-Glass.

Or Gerda following Little Ray,To wondrous countries far away.

Well, and just so this volume can,Transport each little maid or man.

Presto from where they live away,Where other children used to play.

As from the house your mother sees,You playing round the garden trees.

So you may see if you but look,Through the windows of this book.

Another child far, far away,And in another garden play.

But do not think you can at all,By knocking on the window, call.

That child to hear you. He intent,Is still on his play-business bent.

He does not hear, he will not look,Nor yet be lured out of this book.

For long ago, the truth to say,He has grown up and gone away.

And it is but a child of air,That lingers in the garden there.

AS swallows turning backward,When half-way o'er the sea.

At one word's trumpet summons,They came again to me -.

The hopes I had forgotten,Came back again to me.

I know not which to credit,O lady of my heart!.

Your eyes that bade me linger,Your words that bade us part -.

I know not which to credit,My reason or my heart.

But be my hopes rewarded,Or be they but in vain.

I have dreamed a golden vision,I have gathered in the grain -.

I have dreamed a golden vision,I have not lived in vain.

FAREWELL, and when forth,I through the Golden Gates to Golden Isles.

Steer without smiling, through the sea of smiles,Isle upon isle, in the seas of the south.

Isle upon island, sea upon sea,Why should I sail, why should the breeze?.

I have been young, and I have counted friends,A hopeless sail I spread, too late, too late.

Why should I from isle to isle,Sail, a hopeless sailor?.

1,Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed.

Little Louis Sanchez, will be given you to read,Then you shall discover, that your name was printed down.

By the English printers, long before, in London town,In the great and busy city where the East and West are met.

All the little letters did the English printer set,While you thought of nothing, and were still too young to play.

Foreign people thought of you in places far away,Ay, and when you slept, a baby, over all the English lands.

Other little children took the volume in their hands,Other children questioned, in their homes across the seas.

Who was little Louis, won't you tell us, mother, please?,2.

Now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and play,Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey.

Watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried by the breeze,Tiny sandpipers, and the huge Pacific seas.

And remember in your playing, as the sea-fog rolls to you,Long ere you could read it, how I told you what to do.

And that while you thought of no one, nearly half the world away,Some one thought of Louis on the beach of Monterey!.

I WHO all the winter through,Cherished other loves than you.