Songs of Travel

from

Songs of Travel by         Robert Louis Stevenson

… 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,

double was their love

from

Jerusalem Delivered by         Torquato Tasso

Their strength was double, double was their love.

XXXVI The noble lovers use well might you see, A wondrous guise, till then unseen, unheard, To save themselves forgot both he and she, Each other’s life did keep, defend, and guard; The strokes that gainst her lord discharged be, The dame had care to bear, to break, to ward, His shield kept off the blows bent on his dear, Which, if need be, his naked head should bear.

love-making is an art

from

Helen of Troy And Other Poems by         Sara Teasdale

By the tread of homing feet.

By the Sea

Beside an ebbing northern sea While stars awaken one by one, We walk together, I and he.

He woos me with an easy grace That proves him only half sincere; A light smile flickers on his face.

To him love-making is an art, And as a flutist plays a flute, So does he play upon his heart …

Remained below to reach above

from

Songs of Travel by              Robert Louis Stevenson

Towered to contemporary sight – Still in fraternal faith and love, Remained below to reach above, Gave and obeyed the apt command, Pilot and vassal of the land.

IV

My Tembinok’ from men like these Inherited his palaces, His right to rule, his powers of mind, His cocoa-islands sea-enshrined. Stern bearer of the sword and whip …

the lover’s song

from

Ballads by            Robert Louis Stevenson:

The living knit to the living, and sang the lover’s song:
NIGHT, NIGHT IT IS, NIGHT UPON THE PALMS. NIGHT, NIGHT IT IS, THE LAND WIND HAS BLOWN. STARRY, STARRY NIGHT, OVER DEEP AND HEIGHT; LOVE, LOVE IN THE VALLEY, LOVE ALL ALONE.
“Taheia, heavy of hair, a foolish thing have we done, To bind what gods have sundered unkindly into one. Why should a lowly lover have touched Taheia’s skirt, Taheia the well-descended, and Rua child of the dirt?”
” – On high with the haka-ikis my father sits in state, Ten times fifty kinsmen salute him in the gate;

the dove

from

Aeneid by Virgil:
In larger compass on the roomy sea. As, when the dove her rocky hold forsakes, Rous’d in a fright, her sounding wings she shakes; The cavern rings with clatt’ring; out she flies, And leaves her callow care, and cleaves the skies: At first she flutters; but at length she springs To smoother flight, and shoots upon her wings: So Mnestheus in the Dolphin cuts the sea; And, flying with a force, that force assists his way. Sergesthus in the Centaur soon he pass’d, Wedg’d in the rocky shoals, and sticking fast.

before the glass

from

Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale:
Each one puts on before the glass Her most becoming hat and gown.
But oh, the shy and eager thoughts That hide and will not get them dressed, Why is it that they always seem So much more lovely than the rest?
TO DICK, ON HIS SIXTH BIRTHDAY
Tho’ I am very old and wise, And you are neither wise nor old, When I look far into your eyes, I know things I was never told: …

And the bright Cloud saild on

from

Poems of William Blake by               William Blake:

And all shall say, without a use this shining women liv’d, Or did she only live to be at death the food of worms.
The Cloud reclind upon his airy throne and answerd thus.
Then if thou art the food of worms, O virgin of the skies, How great thy use, how great thy blessing, every thing that lives. Lives not alone nor or itself: fear not and I will call, The weak worm from its lowly bed, and thou shalt hear its voice. Come forth worm and the silent valley, to thy pensive queen.
The helpless worm arose and sat upon the Lillys leaf, And the bright Cloud saild on, to find his partner in the vale.

to the stars exalted

from

Bucolics by              Virgil:

Thistle and prickly thorn uprear their heads. Now, O ye shepherds, strew the ground with leaves, And o’er the fountains draw a shady veil- So Daphnis to his memory bids be done- And rear a tomb, and write thereon this verse: ‘I, Daphnis in the woods, from hence in fame Am to the stars exalted, guardian once Of a fair flock, myself more fair than they.’”
MENALCAS So is thy song to me, poet divine, As slumber on the grass to weary limbs,

The engraving and the singing muse

from

Moral Emblems by            Robert Louis Stevenson:

I move with that illustrious crew, The ambidextrous Kings of Art; And every mortal thing I do Brings ringing money in the mart.
Hence, in the morning hour, the mead, The forest and the stream perceive Me wandering as the muses lead – Or back returning in the eve.
Two muses like two maiden aunts, The engraving and the singing muse, Follow, through all my favourite haunts,