Sole street-lamp and the only sentinel.

  To other lands and nights my fancy turned —

  To London first, and chiefly to your house,

  The many-pillared and the well-beloved.

  There yearning fancy lighted; there again

  In the upper room I lay, and heard far off

  The unsleeping city murmur like a shell;

  The muffled tramp of the Museum guard

  Once more went by me; I beheld again

  Lamps vainly brighten the dispeopled street;

  Again I longed for the returning morn,

  The awaking traffic, the bestirring birds,

  The consentaneous trill of tiny song

  That weaves round monumental cornices

  A passing charm of beauty. Most of all,

  For your light foot I wearied, and your knock

  That was the glad réveillé of my day.

  Lo, now, when to your task in the great house

  At morning through the portico you pass,

  One moment glance, where by the pillared wall

  Far-voyaging island gods, begrimed with smoke,

  Sit now unworshipped, the rude monument

  Of faiths forgot and races undivined;

  Sit now disconsolate, remembering well

  The priest, the victim, and the songful crowd,

  The blaze of the blue noon, and that huge voice,

  Incessant, of the breakers on the shore.

  As far as these from their ancestral shrine,

  So far, so foreign, your divided friends

  Wander, estranged in body, not in mind.

  Apemama.

  XXXVII

  THE HOUSE OF TEMBINOKA

  [At my departure from the island of Apemama, for which you will look in vain in most atlases, the King and I agreed, since we both set up to be in the poetical way, that we should celebrate our separation in verse. Whether or not his Majesty has been true to his bargain, the laggard posts of the Pacific may perhaps inform me in six months, perhaps not before a year. The following lines represent my part of the contract, and it is hoped, by their pictures of strange manners, they may entertain a civilised audience. Nothing throughout has been invented or exaggerated; the lady herein referred to as the author’s muse has confined herself to stringing into rhyme facts or legends that I saw or heard during two months’ residence upon the island. — R. L. S.]

  ENVOI

  Let us, who part like brothers, part like bards;

  And you in your tongue and measure, I in mine,

  Our now division duly solemnise.

  Unlike the strains, and yet the theme is one:

  The strains unlike, and how unlike their fate!

  You to the blinding palace-yard shall call

  The prefect of the singers, and to him,

  Listening devout, your valedictory verse

  Deliver; he, his attribute fulfilled,

  To the island chorus hand your measures on,

  Wed now with harmony: so them, at last,

  Night after night, in the open hall of dance,

  Shall thirty matted men, to the clapped hand,

  Intone and bray and bark. Unfortunate!

  Paper and print alone shall honour mine.

  THE SONG

  Let now the King his ear arouse

  And toss the bosky ringlets from his brows,

  The while, our bond to implement,

  My muse relates and praises his descent.

  I

  Bride of the shark, her valour first I sing

  Who on the lone seas quickened of a King.

  She, from the shore and puny homes of men,

  Beyond the climber’s sea-discerning ken,

  Swam, led by omens; and devoid of fear,

  Beheld her monstrous paramour draw near.

  She gazed; all round her to the heavenly pale,

  The simple sea was void of isle or sail —

  Sole overhead the unsparing sun was reared —

  When the deep bubbled and the brute appeared.

  But she, secure in the decrees of fate,

  Made strong her bosom and received the mate,

  And, men declare, from that marine embrace

  Conceived the virtues of a stronger race.

  II

  Her stern descendant next I praise,

  Survivor of a thousand frays: —

  In the hall of tongues who ruled the throng;

  Led and was trusted by the strong;

  And when spears were in the wood,

  Like a tower of vantage stood: —

  Whom, not till seventy years had sped,

  Unscarred of breast, erect of head,

  Still light of step, still bright of look,

  The hunter, Death, had overtook.

  III

  His sons, the brothers twain, I sing.

  Of whom the elder reigned a King.

  No Childeric he, yet much declined

  From his rude sire’s imperious mind,

  Until his day came when he died,

  He lived, he reigned, he versified.

  But chiefly him I celebrate

  That was the pillar of the state,

  Ruled, wise of word and bold of mien,

  The peaceful and the warlike scene;

  And played alike the leader’s part

  In lawful and unlawful art.

  His soldiers with emboldened ears

  Heard him laugh among the spears.

  He could deduce from age to age

  The web of island parentage;

  Best lay the rhyme, best lead the dance,

  For any festal circumstance:

  And fitly fashion oar and boat,

  A palace or an armour coat.

  None more availed than he to raise

  The strong, suffumigating blaze,

  Or knot the wizard leaf: none more,

  Upon the untrodden windward shore

  Of the isle, beside the beating main,

  To cure the sickly and constrain,

  With muttered words and waving rods,

  The gibbering and the whistling gods.

  But he, though thus with hand and head

  He ruled, commanded, charmed, and led,

  And thus in virtue and in might

  Towered to contemporary sight —

  Still in fraternal faith and love,

  Remained below to reach above,

  Gave and obeyed the apt command,

  Pilot and vassal of the land.

  IV

  My Tembinok’ from men like these

  Inherited his palaces,

  His right to rule, his powers of mind,

  His cocoa-islands sea-enshrined.

  Stern bearer of the sword and whip,

  A master passed in mastership,

  He learned, without the spur of need,

  To write, to cipher, and to read;

  From all that touch on his prone shore

  Augments his treasury of lore,

  Eager in age as erst in youth

  To catch an art, to learn a truth,

  To paint on the internal page

  A clearer picture of the age.

  His age, you say? But ah, not so!

  In his lone isle of long ago,

  A royal Lady of Shalott,

  Sea-sundered, he beholds it not;

  He only hears it far away.

  The stress of equatorial day

  He suffers; he records the while

  The vapid annals of the isle;

  Slaves bring him praise of his renown,

  Or cackle of the palm-tree town;

  The rarer ship and the rare boat

  He marks; and only hears remote,

  Where thrones and fortunes rise and reel,

  The thunder of the turning wheel.

  V

  For the unexpected tears he shed

  At my departing, may his lion head

  Not whiten, his revolving years

  No fresh occasion minister of tears;

  At book or cards, at work or sport,

  Him may the breeze across the palace court

  For ever fan; and swelling near

  For ever the loud song divert his ear.

  Schooner Equator, at Sea.

  XXXVIII

  THE WOODMAN

  In all the grove, nor stream nor bird

  Nor aught beside my blows was heard,

  And the woods wore their noonday dress —

  The glory of their silentness.

  From the island summit to the seas,

  Trees mounted, and trees drooped, and trees

  Groped upward in the gaps. The green

  Inarboured talus and ravine

  By fathoms. By the multitude,

  The rugged columns of the wood

  And bunches of the branches stood:

  Thick as a mob, deep as a sea,

  And silent as eternity.

  With lowered axe, with backward head,

  Late from this scene my labourer fled,

  And with a ravelled tale to tell,

  Returned. Some denizen of hell,

  Dead man or disinvested god,

  Had close behind him peered and trod,

  And triumphed when he turned to flee.

  How different fell the lines with me!

  Whose eye explored the dim arcade

  Impatient of the uncoming shade —

  Shy elf, or dryad pale and cold,

  Or mystic lingerer from of old:

  Vainly. The fair and stately things,

  Impassive as departed kings,

  All still in the wood’s stillness stood,

  And dumb. The rooted multitude

  Nodded and brooded, bloomed and dreamed,

  Unmeaning, undivined. It seemed

  No other art, no hope, they knew,

  Than clutch the earth and seek the blue.

  ‘Mid vegetable king and priest

  And stripling, I (the only beast)

  Was at the beast’s work, killing; hewed

  The stubborn roots across, bestrewed

  The glebe with the dislustred leaves,

  And bade the saplings fall in sheaves;

  Bursting across the tangled math

  A ruin that I called a path,

  A Golgotha that, later on,

  When rains had watered, and suns shone,

  And seeds enriched the place, should bear

  And be called garden. Here and there,

  I spied and plucked by the green hair

  A foe more resolute to live,

  The toothed and killing sensitive.

  He, semi-conscious, fled the attack;

  He shrank and tucked his branches back;

  And straining by his anchor strand,

  Captured and scratched the rooting hand.

  I saw him crouch, I felt him bite;

  And straight my eyes were touched with sight.

  I saw the wood for what it was;

  The lost and the victorious cause;

  The deadly battle pitched in line,

  Saw silent weapons cross and shine:

  Silent defeat, silent assault,

  A battle and a burial vault.

  Thick round me in the teeming mud

  Briar and fern strove to the blood.

  The hooked liana in his gin

  Noosed his reluctant neighbours in:

  There the green murderer throve and spread,

  Upon his smothering victims fed,

  And wantoned on his climbing coil.

  Contending roots fought for the soil

  Like frightened demons: with despair

  Competing branches pushed for air.

  Green conquerors from overhead

  Bestrode the bodies of their dead;

  The Caesars of the silvan field,

  Unused to fail, foredoomed to yield:

  For in the groins of branches, lo!

  The cancers of the orchid grow.

  Silent as in the listed ring

  Two chartered wrestlers strain and cling,

  Dumb as by yellow Hooghly’s side

  The suffocating captives died:

  So hushed the woodland warfare goes

  Unceasing; and the silent foes

  Grapple and smother, strain and clasp

  Without a cry, without a gasp.

  Here also sound Thy fans, O God,

  Here too Thy banners move abroad:

  Forest and city, sea and shore,

  And the whole earth, Thy threshing-floor!

  The drums of war, the drums of peace,

  Roll through our cities without cease,

  And all the iron halls of life

  Ring with the unremitting strife.

  The common lot we scarce perceive.

  Crowds perish, we nor mark nor grieve:

  The bugle calls — we mourn a few!

  What corporal’s guard at Waterloo?

  What scanty hundreds more or less

  In the man-devouring Wilderness?

  What handful bled on Delhi ridge?

  — See, rather, London, on thy bridge

  The pale battalions trample by,

  Resolved to slay, resigned to die.

  Count, rather, all the maimed and dead

  In the unbrotherly war of bread.

  See, rather, under sultrier skies

  What vegetable Londons rise,

  And teem, and suffer without sound.

  Or in your tranquil garden ground,

  Contented, in the falling gloom,

  Saunter and see the roses bloom.

  That these might live, what thousands died!

  All day the cruel hoe was plied;

  The ambulance barrow rolled all day;

  Your wife, the tender, kind, and gay,

  Donned her long gauntlets, caught the spud

  And bathed in vegetable blood;

  And the long massacre now at end,

  See! where the lazy coils ascend,

  See, where the bonfire sputters red

  At even, for the innocent dead.

  Why prate of peace? when, warriors all,

  We clank in harness into hall,

  And ever bare upon the board

  Lies the necessary sword.

  In the green field or quiet street,

  Besieged we sleep, beleaguered eat;

  Labour by day and wake o’ nights,

  In war with rival appetites.

  The rose on roses feeds; the lark

  On larks. The sedentary clerk

  All morning with a diligent pen

  Murders the babes of other men;

  And like the beasts of wood and park,

  Protects his whelps, defends his den.

  Unshamed the narrow aim I hold;

  I feed my sheep, patrol my fold;

  Breathe war on wolves and rival flocks,

  A pious outlaw on the rocks

  Of God and morning; and when time

  Shall bow, or rivals break me, climb

  Where no undubbed civilian dares,

  In my war harness, the loud stairs

  Of honour; and my conqueror

  Hail me a warrior fallen in war.

  Vailima.

  XXXIX

  TROPIC RAIN

  As the single pang of the blow, when the metal is mingled well,

  Rings and lives and resounds in all the bounds of the bell,

  So the thunder above spoke with a single tongue,

  So in the heart of the mountain the sound of it rumbled and clung.

  Sudden the thunder was drowned — quenched was the levin light —

  And the angel-spirit of rain laughed out loud in the night.

  Loud as the maddened river raves in the cloven glen,

  Angel of rain! you laughed and leaped on the roofs of men;

  And the sleepers sprang in their beds, and joyed and feared as you fell.

  You struck, and my cabin quailed; the roof of it roared like a bell.

  You spoke, and at once the mountain shouted and shook with brooks.

  You ceased, and the day returned, rosy, with virgin looks.

  And methought that beauty and terror are only one, not two;

  And the world has room for love, and death, and thunder, and dew;

  And all the sinews of hell slumber in summer air;

  And the face of God is a rock, but the face of the rock is fair.

  Beneficent streams of tears flow at the finger of pain;

  And out of the cloud that smites, beneficent rivers of rain.

  Vailima.

  XL

  AN END OF TRAVEL

  Let now your soul in this substantial world

  Some anchor strike. Be here the body moored; —

  This spectacle immutably from now

  The picture in your eye; and when time strikes,

  And the green scene goes on the instant blind —

  The ultimate helpers, where your horse to-day

  Conveyed you dreaming, bear your body dead.

  Vailima.

  XLI

  We uncommiserate pass into the night

  From the loud banquet, and departing leave

  A tremor in men’s memories, faint and sweet

  And frail as music. Features of our face,

  The tones of the voice, the touch of the loved hand,

  Perish and vanish, one by one, from earth:

  Meanwhile, in the hall of song, the multitude

  Applauds the new performer. One, perchance,

  One ultimate survivor lingers on,

  And smiles, and to his ancient heart recalls

  The long forgotten. Ere the morrow die,

  He too, returning, through the curtain comes,

  And the new age forgets us and goes on.

  XLII

  Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,

  Say, could that lad be I?

  Merry of soul he sailed on a day

  Over the sea to Skye.

  Mull was astern, Rum on the port,

  Eigg on the starboard bow;

  Glory of youth glowed in his soul:

  Where is that glory now?

  Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,

  Say, could that lad be I?

  Merry of soul he sailed on a day

  Over the sea to Skye.

  Give me again all that was there,

  Give me the sun that shone!

  Give me the eyes, give me the soul,

  Give me the lad that’s gone!

  Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,

  Say, could that lad be I?