Poems, by Robert Louis Stevenson, hitherto unpublished/The whole day thro', etc.
THE WHOLE DAY THRO', IN CONTEMPT AND PITY—1871
The poem entitled "Prelude," previously printed by The Bibliophile Society, was accompanied by a manuscript note of Stevenson's to the effect that it was then that he first began to take interest in the poor and sorrowful. In that poem he beats his drum in search of recruits to make life happier. The present poem shows the same metaphor, and throughout is similar in theme and purpose,—its fine note of optimism coming to a climax in the closing stanza where Stevenson, full of his new sympathy with humanity, likes to think of all men as heroes in a common cause.
THE WHOLE DAY THRO', IN CONTEMPT AND PITY
The whole day thro', in contempt and pity,
I pass your houses and beat my drum,
In the roar of people that go and come,
In the sunlit streets of the city.
Hark! do you hear the ictus coming,
Mid the roar and clatter of feet?
Hark! in the ebb and flow of the street
Do you hear the sound of my drumming?
Sun and the fluttering ribbons blind me;
But still I beat as I travel the town,
And still the recruits come manfully down,
And the march grows long behind me.
In time to the drum the feet fall steady,
The feet fall steady and firm to hear,
And we cry, as we march, that the goal is near,
For all men are heroes already!