Poems, by Robert Louis Stevenson, hitherto unpublished/On the gorgeous hills of morning
ON THE GORGEOUS HILLS OF MORNING
(Samoan period, 1890-1894)
This page of verse, unfinished though the poem is, has a very personal charm both in the actual picture that it presents (Stevenson, abed, in the forest storm, listening to the early symphony of the birds), and in showing the thoughts that stirred him despite "the merry piping." Though repining was not his way, his letters often indicate his longing for that Scotland which he was never to see again; and here, after the note of tropic beauty has been struck in the initial portion of his poem, he evokes the picture of the far-away Highlands with their "old plain men," and their "young fair lasses." And as cut off from all the activities and interests of his former life he reflects on the remoteness of the secluded island from which he can no longer fare, the great forests seem to him mere "empty places," mocked at not only by life but even by death.
ON THE GORGEOUS HILLS OF MORNING
On the gorgeous hills of morning
A sudden piping of birds,
A piping of all the forest, high and merry and clear,
I lay in my tent and listened;
I lay and heard them long,
In the dark of the moonlit morning,
The birds of the night at song.
I lay and listened and heard them
Sing ere the day was begun;
Sing and sink into
Silence one by one.
I lay in my bed and looked—
Paler than starlight or lightning
A glimmer ...
In the highlands in the country places
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
And the young fair lasses
Quiet eyes,
Light and heat begin, begin and strengthen,
And the shadows turn and shrink and lengthen,
As the great sun passes in the skies.
Life and death go by with heedful faces—
Mock with silent steps these empty places.