GREETING
(TO ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, IN SAMOA)
We, pent in cities, prisoned in the mart,
Can know you only as a man apart,
But ever-present through your matchless art.
You have exchanged the old, familiar ways
For isles, where, through the range of splendid days,
Her treasure Nature lavishly displays.
There, by the gracious sweep of ampler seas,
That swell responsive to the odorous breeze.
You have the wine of Life, and we the lees!
You mark, perchance, within your island bowers,
The slow departure of the languorous hours,
And breathe the sweetness of the strange wild-flowers.
And everything your soul and sense delights—
But in the solemn wonder of your nights,
When Peace her message on the landscape writes;
When Ocean scarcely flecks her marge with foam—
Your thoughts must sometimes from your island roam,
To centre on the sober face of Home.
Though many a league of water rolls between
The simple beauty of an English scene,
From all these wilder charms your love may wean.
Some kindly sprite may bring you as a boon
Sweets from the rose that crowns imperial June,
Or reminiscence of the throstle’s tune;
Yea, gladly grant you, with a generous hand,
Far glimpses of the winding, wind-swept strand,
The glens and mountains of your native land,
Until you hear the pipes upon the breeze—
But wake unto the wild realities
The tangled forests and the boundless seas!
For lo! the moonless night has passed away,
A sudden dawn dispels the shadows grey,
The glad sea moves and hails the quickening day.
New life within the arbours of your fief
Awakes the blossom, quivers in the leaf,
And splendour flames upon the coral reef.
If such a prospect stimulate your art,
More than our meadows where the shadows dart,
More than the life which throbs in London’s heart,
Then stay, encircled by your Southern bowers,
And weave, amid the incense of the flowers,
The skein of fair romance—the gain is ours!
F. J. Cox.
Weekly Sun, 11th November 1904.