Page:The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Vailima Edition, Volume 8, 1922.djvu/471

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NEW POEMS

Now I follow the throng,
Walk in the beaten way,
Hear what the elders say,
And own that I was wrong—
I who was young so long.


LXXXV

I WHO all the winter through,
Cherished other loves than you,
And kept hands with hoary policy in marriage-bed and pew;
Now I know the false and true,
For the earnest sun looks through,
And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew.


Now the hedged meads renew
Rustic odour, smiling hue,
And the clean air shines and twinkles as the world goes wheeling through;
And my heart springs up anew,
Bright and confident and true,
And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew.


LXXXVI

LOVE—what is love? A great and aching heart;
Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair.
Life—what is life? Upon a moorland bare
To see love coming and see love depart.

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