Selected Poems

The author of Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is known all over the world as a master storyteller, yet his achievements as a poet have been strangely neglected. This book reveals how much we have been missing. Fascinated by a wide variety of verse techniques, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) produced superb work in styles ranging from folk ballads to witty conversational offerings for his friends. Pieces using Robert Burns's stanza form and dialect rank among the most attractive Scots poetry of the nineteenth century. Angus Calder has brought together many uncollected poems, substantial extracts from the published collections and the complete Child's Garden of Verse (1885), an extraordinarily evocative picture of childhood loneliness, visions and fears. Far more than in his famous novels, it was here that Stevenson felt able to give direct expression to his deepest feelings about friendship, love and nostalgia; this definitive anthology captures a compelling and utterly individual voice.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was born in Edinburgh. In the brief span of forty-four years, dogged by poor health, he made an enormous contribution to English literature with his novels, poetry, and essays. The son of upper-middle-class parents, he was the victim of lung trouble from birth, and spent a sheltered childhood surrounded by constant care. The balance of his life was taken up with his unremitting devotion to work, and a search for a cure to his illness that took him all over the world. His travel essays were publihsed widely, and his short fiction was gathered in many volumes. His first full-length work of fiction, Treasure Island, was published in 1883 and brought him great fame, which only increased with the publication of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). He followed with the Scottish romances Kidnapped (1886) and The Master of Ballantrae (1889). In 1888 he set out with his family for the South Seas, traveling to the leper colony at Molokai, and finally settling in Samoa, where he died.

Selected Poems Preface
Acknowledgments
Table of Dates
Further Reading

UNCOLLECTED POEMS, TO 1885

The Light-Keeper
"The roadside lined with ragweed, the sharp hills"
Spring-Song
Duddingston
"The whole day thro', in contempt and pity"
"I sit up here at midnight"
Dedication
Epistle to Charles Baxter
To Charles Baxter
To Sydney
"O dull, cold northern sky"
Ne Sit Ancillae Tibi Amor Pudori
To Ottilie
"A little before me, and hark!"
St. Martin's Summer
"My brain swims empty and light"
The Cruel Mistress
Storm
Stormy Nights
Song at Dawn
"I am a hunchback, yellow faced -"
"Last night we had a thunderstorm in style"
To Charles Baxter [in Lallan]
To the Same (On the death of their common friend, Mr. John Adam...)
"I saw red evening through the rain"
"I who all the winter through"
John Cavalier
Alcaics to H. F. Brown
Lines for H. F. Brown
To Mrs. MacMorland
Brasheanna
"Since years ago for evermore"

Rhymes to W. E. Henley
"Dear Henley, with a pig's snout on"
"My letters fail, I learn with grief, to please"
"We dwell in these melodious days"

Tales of Arabia
"Flower god, god of the spring, beautiful, bountiful"
"Now bare to the beholder's eye"

Translations from Martial
Epitaphium Erotii
De M. Antonio
De Liggura

MORAL EMBLEMS (1882)

Moral Emblems I
I. "See how the children in the print"
II. "Reader, your soul upraise to see"
III. A Peak in Darien
IV. "See in the print, how moved by whim"
V. "Mark, printed on the opposing page"

Moral Emblems II
I. "With storms a-weather, rocks a-lee"
II. "The careful angler chose his nook"
III. "The Abbot for a walk went out"
IV. "The frozen peaks he once explored"
V. "Industrious pirate! see him sweep"

FROM MORAL TALES [1882]

Robin and Ben: or, the Pirate and the Apothecary

A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES

To Alison Cunningham
Bed in Summer
A Thought
At the Seaside
Young Night Thought
Whole Duty of Children
Rain
Pirate Story
Foreign Lands
Windy Nights
Travel
Singing
Looking Forward
A Good Play
Where Go the Boats?
Auntie's Skirts
The Land of Counterpane
The Land of Nod
My Shadow
System
A Good Boy
Escape at Bedtime
Marchng Song
The Cow
Happy Thought
The Wind
Keepsake Mill
Good and Bad Children
Foreign Children
The Sun's Travels
The Lamplighter
My Bed is a Boat
The Moon
The Swing
Time to Rise
Looking-Glass River
Fairy-Bread
From a Railway Carriage
Winter Time
The Hayloft
Farewell to the Farm
North-West Passage

The Child Alone
The Unseen Playmate
My Ship and I
My Kingdom
Picture Books in Winter
My Treasures
Block City
The Land of Story-Books
Armies in the Fire
The Little Land

Garden Days
Night and Day
Nest Eggs
The Flowers
Summer Sun
The Dumb Soldier
Autumn Fires
The Gardener
Historical Associations

Envoys
To Willie and Henrietta
To My Mother
To Auntie
To Minnie
To My Name-Child
To Any Reader

FROM UNDERWOODS (1887)

Book One
I. Envoy
III. The Canoe Speaks
V. The House Beautiful
VI. To a Gardener
IX. To K. de M.
X. To N. V. de G. S.
XII. To Mrs. Will H. Low
XIII. To H. F. Brown
XV. Et Tu in Arcadia Vixisti
XVI. To W. E. Henley
XVIII. The Mirror Speaks
XXI. Requiem
XXVI. The Sick Child
XXX. A Portrait
XXXV. Skerryvore: The Parallel
XXXVIII. "My body which my dungeon is"

Book Two - In Scots
I. The Maker to Posterity
II. Ille Terrarum
III. "When aince Aprile has fairly come"
IV. A Mile an' a Bittock
V. A Lowden Sabbath Morn
VI. The Spaewife
VII. The Blast - 1875
VIII. The Counterblast - 1886
IX. The Counterblast Ironical
X. Their Laureate to an Academy Class Dinner Club
XI. Embro Hie Kirk
XII. The Scotsman's Return from Abroad
XIII. "Late in the nicht in bed I lay"
XIV. My Conscience!
XV. To Doctor John Brown
XVI. "It's an owercome sooth for age an' youth"

FROM BALLADS (1890)

The Song of Rahero
Ticonderoga
Heather Ale
Christmas at Sea

UNCOLLECTED POEMS, 1885-1894

The Song of the Sword of Alan
The Bour-Tree Den
To Katharine de Mattos
The Fine Pacific Islands
To Henry James
The Family
"As with heaped bees at hiving time"
"Fixed is the doom; and to the last of years"
To My Wife

FROM SONGS OF TRAVEL (1895)

I. The Vagabond
II. Youth and Love
IV. "In dreams, unhappy, I behold you stand"
V. "She rested by the Broken Brook"
VI. "The infinite shining heavens"
VIII. "To you, let snow and roses"
IX. "Let Beauty awake in the morn from beautiful dreams"
XI. "I will make you brooches and toys for your delight"
XII. We Have Loved of Yore
XIV. Mater Triumphans
XV. "Bright is the ring of words"
XVI. "In the highlands, in the country places"
XVII. To the Tune of Wandering Willie
XVIII. Winter
XXI. To Sidney Colvin
XXII. "The morning drum-call on my eager ear"
XXIII. "I have trod the upward and the downward slope"
XXVI. If This Were Faith
XXVIII. To the Muse
XXXV. To My Old Familiars
XXXVI. "The tropics vanish, and meseems that I"
XXXVII. To S. C.
XXXIX. The Woodman
XL. Tropic Rain
XLIII. The Last Sight
XLIV. "Sing me a song of a lad that is gone"
XLV. To S. R. Crockett
XLVI. Evensong

Appendix: Note on Scots Language, from Underwoods
Notes
Glossary
Index of Titles
Index of First Lines

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Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials