Songs of Travel | Page 7

also with an ardent mind,
Time, wealth, and fame forgot,
Our
glory in our patience find
And skim, and skim the pot:
Till last, when round the house we hear
The evensong of birds,
One
corner of blue heaven appear
In our clear well of words.
Leave, leave it then, muse of my heart!
Sans finish and sans frame,

Leave unadorned by needless art
The picture as it came.
XXVIII - TO AN ISLAND PRINCESS
SINCE long ago, a child at home,
I read and longed to rise and roam,

Where'er I went, whate'er I willed,
One promised land my fancy
filled.
Hence the long roads my home I made;
Tossed much in ships;
have often laid
Below the uncurtained sky my head,
Rain-deluged
and wind-buffeted:
And many a thousand hills I crossed
And
corners turned - Love's labour lost,
Till, Lady, to your isle of sun
I
came, not hoping; and, like one
Snatched out of blindness, rubbed my

eyes,
And hailed my promised land with cries.
Yes, Lady, here I was at last;
Here found I all I had forecast:
The
long roll of the sapphire sea
That keeps the land's virginity;
The
stalwart giants of the wood
Laden with toys and flowers and food;

The precious forest pouring out
To compass the whole town about;

The town itself with streets of lawn,
Loved of the moon, blessed by
the dawn,
Where the brown children all the day
Keep up a ceaseless
noise of play,
Play in the sun, play in the rain,
Nor ever quarrel or
complain; -
And late at night, in the woods of fruit,
Hark! do you
hear the passing flute?
I threw one look to either hand,
And knew I was in Fairyland.
And
yet one point of being so
I lacked. For, Lady (as you know),

Whoever by his might of hand,
Won entrance into Fairyland,
Found
always with admiring eyes
A Fairy princess kind and wise.
It was
not long I waited; soon
Upon my threshold, in broad noon,

Gracious and helpful, wise and good,
The Fairy Princess Moe stood.
Tantira, Tahiti, Nov. 5, 1888.
XXIX - TO KALAKAUA (With a present of a Pearl)
THE Silver Ship, my King - that was her name
In the bright islands
whence your fathers came -
The Silver Ship, at rest from winds and
tides,
Below your palace in your harbour rides:
And the seafarers,
sitting safe on shore,
Like eager merchants count their treasures o'er.

One gift they find, one strange and lovely thing,
Now doubly
precious since it pleased a king.
The right, my liege, is ancient as the lyre
For bards to give to kings
what kings admire.
'Tis mine to offer for Apollo's sake;
And since
the gift is fitting, yours to take.
To golden hands the golden pearl I
bring:
The ocean jewel to the island king.

Honolulu, Feb. 3, 1889.
XXX - TO PRINCESS KAIULANI
[Written in April to Kaiulani in the April of her age; and at Waikiki,
within easy walk of Kaiulani's banyan! When she comes to my land
and her father's, and the rain beats upon the window (as I fear it will),
let her look at this page; it will be like a weed gathered and pressed at
home; and she will remember her own islands, and the shadow of the
mighty tree; and she will hear the peacocks screaming in the dusk and
the wind blowing in the palms; and she will think of her father sitting
there alone. - R. L. S.]
FORTH from her land to mine she goes,
The island maid, the island
rose,
Light of heart and bright of face:
The daughter of a double
race.
Her islands here, in Southern sun,
Shall mourn their Kaiulani gone,

And I, in her dear banyan shade,
Look vainly for my little maid.
But our Scots islands far away
Shall glitter with unwonted day,
And
cast for once their tempests by
To smile in Kaiulani's eye.
Honolulu.
XXXI - TO MOTHER MARYANNE
To see the infinite pity of this place,
The mangled limb, the
devastated face,
The innocent sufferer smiling at the rod -
A fool
were tempted to deny his God.
He sees, he shrinks. But if he gaze
again,
Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!
He marks the
sisters on the mournful shores;
And even a fool is silent and adores.
Guest House, Kalawao, Molokai.
XXXII - IN MEMORIAM E. H.

I KNEW a silver head was bright beyond compare,
I knew a queen of
toil with a crown of silver hair.
Garland of valour and sorrow, of
beauty and renown,
Life, that honours the brave, crowned her himself
with the crown.
The beauties of youth are frail, but this was a jewel of age. Life, that
delights in the brave, gave it himself for a gage. Fair was the crown to
behold, and beauty its poorest part - At once the scar of the wound and
the order pinned on the heart.
The beauties of man are frail, and the silver lies in the dust, And the
queen that we call to mind sleeps with the brave and the just; Sleeps
with the weary at length; but, honoured and ever fair, Shines in the eye
of the mind