A SONG OF THE ROAD

The gauger walked with willing foot,
And aye the gauger played the flute;
And what should Master Gauger play
But Over the hills and far away?

Whene'er I buckle on my pack5
And foot it gaily in the track,
O pleasant gauger, long since dead,
I hear you fluting on ahead.

You go with me the self-same way—
The self-same air for me you play;10
For I do think and so do you,
It is the tune to travel to.

For who would gravely set his face
To go to this or t'other place?
There's nothing under Heav'n so blue15
That's fairly worth the travelling to.

On every hand the roads begin,
And people walk with zeal therein;
But whereso'er the highways tend,
Be sure there's nothing at the end.20

Then follow you, wherever hie
The travelling mountains of the sky.
Or let the streams in civil mode
Direct your choice upon a road;

For one and all, or high or low,25
Will lead you where you wish to go;
And one and all go night and day
Over the hills and far away!

R. L. Stevenson.

[NOTES]

The difficulty has been to select from a wealth of poems with which volumes could have been filled. Indeed three collections dealing exclusively with Greece, with Italy, and with Switzerland have already been published by the Oxford University Press. In this volume the traveller is not confined to one country, and he is not asked to drag a lengthening chain beyond the limits of Europe. Here are some poems about travel generally, and then country by country a grand tour is traced. My obligation to the authors or owners of copyright poems is duly acknowledged with grateful thanks.

P. [7]. Clough.—The opening lines of Amours de Voyage.

P. [7]. Tennyson.—A few lines only from Ulysses.

P. [8]. Goldsmith.—From The Traveller.

P. [11]. Bridges.—By kind permission of the Poet Laureate and Messrs. Smith, Elder.

Pp. [12] and [13]. Arnold.—From Stanzas composed at Carnac and Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse.

Pp. [20] and [21]. Tennyson.—The passage from Oenone and the idyll from The Princess are given here because their imagery was inspired by the Pyrenees, which the poet repeatedly visited, first of all in 1830 with Hallam, intending to aid in the Spanish revolt against Ferdinand VII. Tennyson also spent some time in the Pyrenees with Clough in 1861. It is Hallam who is referred to in In the Valley of Cauteretz, a poem which Tennyson selected to write in Queen Victoria's album. Swinburne has praised 'the solemn sweetness' of these 'majestic verses'.

P. [25]. Byron.—From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto i, 18 and 19.

P. [26]. Godley.—By permission of the author and Messrs. Methuen.

P. [29]. Butler.—By permission of Mrs. A. G. Butler. The poem originally appeared in The Times shortly after the Matterhorn accident in 1865.

P. [31]. Hardy.—By permission of the author and Messrs. Macmillan.

Pp. [32] and [33]. Watts-Dunton.—By kind permission of the author, given shortly before his death.

P. [35]. Arnold.—The first portion is from Stanzas in Memory of the Author of 'Obermann' (Étienne Pivert de Senancour); the second from Obermann once More, composed many years afterwards.

P. [38]. Symonds.—By permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder.

P. [47]. Byron.—From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto iv, 73, 74, and 75.

P. [48]. Clough.—The concluding lines of the introduction to canto iii of Amours de Voyage.

P. [51]. Rogers.—From Italy.

P. [52]. Shelley.—From Lines written among the Euganean Hills.

P. [53]. Byron.—From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto iv, 1, 2, 3, 4, 11, and 13.

P. [56]. Byron.—From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto iv, stanzas 48, 49.

P. [60]. Byron.—From Manfred, act III, sc. iv.

P. [62]. Hardy.—From Wessex Poems, etc. By permission of the author and Messrs. Macmillan.

P. [64]. Clough.—From Amours de Voyage, canto iii. There is a note to line 8:

... domus Albuneæ resonantis,
Et præceps Anio, et Tiburni lucus, et uda
Mobilibus pomaria rivis.

P. [65]. Wordsworth.—The first two stanzas 'Composed in the Simplon Pass', 1820. The concluding eight lines are from At Vallombrosa, written when the poet's 'fond wish' to visit this spot had been realized in 1837. Wordsworth is at pains to defend Milton from the charge of having blundered in Paradise Lost, by suggesting that the trees are 'deciduous whereas they are, in fact, pines'. 'The fault-finders', Wordsworth says, 'are themselves mistaken; the natural woods of the region of Vallombrosa are deciduous.'

P. [66]. Rogers.—From Italy.

P. [73]. Phillimore.—By permission of the author.

P. [78]. Blunt.—By permission of the author.

P. [81]. Tennyson.—Lear was not only the inventor or popularizer of 'Limericks', but also a highly-esteemed artist.

Pp. [83] and [85]. Rodd.—By permission of the author, who wrote the introduction to the Oxford anthology, The Englishman in Greece.

P. [86]. Shelley.—Stanzas 4 and 5 of the Ode to Liberty.

P. [87]. Byron.—From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto i, 60 and 61.

P. [91]. Browning.—This poem is not complete.

P. [96]. Byron.—From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto iii, 55.

P. [99]. Calverley.—This is a portion only of the poem.

P. [118]. Cowper.—An extract from the long poem of the same title.

P. [121]. Stevenson.—By permission of Messrs. Chatto & Windus (and Messrs. Scribner's Sons in regard to the American rights).

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