Poem by Robert Louis Stevenson

Songs of Travel and Other Verses. 2. Youth and Love. 1

ONCE only by the garden gate
Our lips we joined and parted.
I must fulfil an empty fate
And travel the uncharted.

Hail and farewell! I must arise,
Leave here the fatted cattle,
And paint on foreign lands and skies
My Odyssey of battle.

The untented Kosmos my abode,
I pass, a wilful stranger:
My mistress still the open road
And the bright eyes of danger.

Come ill or well, the cross, the crown,
The rainbow or the thunder,
I fling my soul and body down
For God to plough them under.

1. I Know Not How, But As I Count
2. Requiem
3. Songs of Travel and Other Verses. 36. TO S.C.
4. Light as the Linnet on My Way I Start
5. Sonet VI. As in the Hostel by the Bridge I Sate

Print

3968 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version