So be my passing!
My task accomplished and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gathered to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson was born at Edinburgh in 1850. He was at first trained to be a lighthouse engineer, following the profession of his family. However, he studied law instead; was admitted to the bar in 1875; and abandoned law for literature a few years later.
Though primarily a novelist, Stevenson has left one immortal book of poetry which is equally at home in the nursery and the library: A Child's Garden of Verses (first published in 1885) is second only to Mother Goose's own collection in its lyrical simplicity and universal appeal. Underwoods (1887) and Ballads (1890) comprise his entire poetic output. As a genial essayist, he is not unworthy to be ranked with Charles Lamb. As a romancer, his fame rests securely on Kidnapped, the unfinished masterpiece, Weir of Hermiston, and that eternal classic of youth, Treasure Island.
Stevenson died after a long and dogged fight with his illness, in the Samoan Islands in 1894.
SUMMER SUN
Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven without repose;
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.
Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
To slip his golden fingers through.
The dusty attic, spider-clad,
He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;
And through the broken edge of tiles
Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.