Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/152

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At the bottom of his Ms. appear two alternate lines as follows:—

That swam light-footed as the thistle-burr
On thee O mother earth, be light on her.


HERE LIES EROTION

Mother and sire, to you do I commend
Tiny Erotion, who must now descend,
A child, among the shadows, and appear
Before hell's bandog and hell's gondolier.
Of six hoar winters she had felt the cold,
But lacked six days of being six years old.
Now she must come, all playful, to that place
Where the great ancients sit with reverend face;
Now lisping, as she used, of whence she came,
Perchance she names and stumbles at my name.
O'er these so fragile bones, let there be laid
A plaything for a turf; and for that maid
That ran so lightly footed in her mirth
Upon thy breast—lie lightly, mother earth!

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