The Swing -- Robert Louis Stevenson

Guest poem sent in by Dale Rosenberg

(Poem #1955) The Swing How do you like to go up in a swing, Up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing Ever a child can do! Up in the air and over the wall, Till I can see so wide, Rivers and trees and cattle and all Over the countryside-- Till I look down on the garden green, Down on the roof so brown-- Up in the air I go flying again, Up in the air and down! -- Robert Louis Stevenson

My first thought for the "poems about flying" theme was Randall Jarell's
devastating "Death of a Ball Turret Gunner."  I see Minstrels has already
printed it. so I went for the complete opposite in emotional impact.

"The Swing" was the first poem I learned about flying.  It just captures for
me so perfectly the lovely feeling of soaring which children have on swings.
I remember being quite small and my mother reciting it to me as she pushed
me higher and higher.  I did the same with my own kids.  So many of RLS's
poems in A Child's Garden of Verses sound so fresh and real today.  I think
that since his subject matter is often universal, the poems don't seem dated
in the way that some children's verse can.

Dale

[Links]

Biography:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Louis_Stevenson

A Child's Garden of Verses:
  http://www.bartleby.com/188/

Dead Man's Chest -- Robert Louis Stevenson

(Poem #1943) Dead Man's Chest Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest-- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! -- Robert Louis Stevenson

Given that "poetry included in works of fiction" is a genre that both Thomas
and I rate very highly, it is surprising that this little scrap of verse has
not been run before. Written as part of Stevenson's classic (and brilliant -
if you haven't read it yet, do so!) "Treasure Island", it has become the
canonical pirate song, with a fame and popularity that almost eclipses that
of the book itself.

Wikipedia has a bit of research on the song that is worth quoting in full:

  In the novel Treasure Island, the full song is not reported. The chorus
  is given in full.

  The book records only one other phrase from the song, near its end:
  "But one man of her crew alive, What put to sea with seventy-five."

  According to research done by Skip Henderson there is an actual
  "legend" behind the song. The legend, which was possibly devised by
  Stevenson himself, says that the rhyme tells the tale of a time when
  Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard, marooned a shipload of
  mutineers on Dead Man's Chest Island, a barren rock in Deadman's Bay
  on Peter Island near Tortola. The island has high cliffs, no trees,
  sparse vegetation and no fresh water. The men were equipped with only
  a single cutlass and a bottle of rum each. The intent was, one would
  assume, that the men would either starve or kill each other in a
  drunken brawl. A month later Teach returned to find that despite the
  blazing Caribbean sun and lack of supplies, fifteen men had survived.
  The shanty tells in part what became of the rest.

The richness and attention to detail involved in constructing an entire
iceberg to push four lines of verse to the surface are reminiscent of
Tolkien, and they give the song a similar appeal, making it both an
integral and organic part of the book and an excellent piece of verse in
its own right.

martin

[Links]

The complete text of Treasure Island:
  http://www.literatureproject.com/treasure-island/

Wikipedia entry:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man's_Chest

An expansion of Stevenson's fragment:
  http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/45732-Young-Ewing-Allison-Derelict

Where Go the Boats? -- Robert Louis Stevenson

(Poem #828) Where Go the Boats? Dark brown is the river, Golden is the sand. It flows along for ever, With trees on either hand. Green leaves a-floating, Castles of the foam, Boats of mine a-boating-- Where will all come home? On goes the river And out past the mill, Away down the valley, Away down the hill. Away down the river, A hundred miles or more, Other little children Shall bring my boats ashore. -- Robert Louis Stevenson

        (A Child's Garden of Verses, XIV)

Few poets can capture the spirit of childhood in quite the way Stevenson can.
The world a child inhabits is in several dimensions bigger, richer and
altogether more magical than the 'real' one, and Stevenson's poems bring out
that difference admirably, blending the real world seamlessly with that of
the imagination, and tossing in details like 'it flows along forever' and
'castles of the foam' for the child's eye view.

As always, note the wonderful imagery, the *feel* of vast distances and
enchanted journeys, the gently rippling rhythm, and the typically
Stevensonian ending (the 'other little children' in far away places is a
recurrent theme in 'A Child's Garden of Verses').

Links:

Biography: poem #20

Other Stevenson poems on Minstrels:

Poem #20, 'Requiem'
Poem #84, 'From a Railway Carriage'
Poem #290, 'Bed in Summer'
Poem #450, 'Auntie's Skirts'
Poem #780, 'The Vagabond'

-martin

The Vagabond -- Robert Louis Stevenson

(Poem #780) The Vagabond Give to me the life I love, Let the lave go by me, Give the jolly heaven above And the byway nigh me. Bed in the bush with stars to see, Bread I dip in the river - There's the life for a man like me, There's the life for ever. Let the blow fall soon or late, Let what will be o'er me; Give the face of earth around And the road before me. Wealth I seek not, hope nor love, Nor a friend to know me; All I seek, the heaven above And the road below me. Or let autumn fall on me Where afield I linger, Silencing the bird on tree, Biting the blue finger. White as meal the frosty field - Warm the fireside haven - Not to autumn will I yield, Not to winter even! Let the blow fall soon or late, Let what will be o'er me; Give the face of earth around, And the road before me. Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, Nor a friend to know me; All I ask, the heaven above And the road below me. -- Robert Louis Stevenson

 From "Songs of Travel and Other Verses", published in 1896.
 Meant to be sung "to an air of Schubert", though I don't know which one.

Robert Louis Stevenson's verse - energetic, enthusiastic and exciting - is
in many ways reminiscent of his prose, and like his prose, it's always fun
to read. Readers looking for profound insight or gut-wrenching emotion are
likely to be disappointed; equally, though, readers looking for metrical
felicity and magical atmospherics are likely to be enchanted.

I often think of Stevenson as a mixture of Walter de la Mare and John
Masefield: the former for his command of atmosphere, and the latter for his
wanderlust. The romance of the open road plays a significant role in
Stevenson's writings, yet it's always tempered with a sense of the beauty of
stillness, of silence. And while RLS cannot (in all honesty) hold a candle
to either de la Mare or Masefield, in many respects he does not miss by
much: his poems rarely fail to capture the imagination, and, having captured
it, to take it to places it's rarely seen before.

thomas.

PS. A quick comment on form: note how the steady rhythm of the hexameter
drives this poem on, and gives it a vigour befitting its subject. Nicely
done.

[Links]

Stevenson poems on the Minstrels:
Poem #20, "Requiem"
Poem #84, "From a Railway Carriage"
Poem #290, "Bed in Summer"
Poem #450, "Auntie's Skirts"
The first of these has a biography and some critical information.

Walter de la Mare:
Poem #2, "The Listeners"
Poem #272, "Napoleon"
Poem #484, "Brueghel's Winter"
Poem #725, "Silver"

John Masefield:
Poem #27, "Sea Fever"
Poem #74, "Cargoes"
Poem #555, "Trade Winds"
Poem #695, "Beauty"
Poem #702, "Night is on the Downland"
Poem #758, "Sea-Change"

The Poet's Corner has many more poems by RLS, including the complete text of
"Songs of Travel" [1] and of "A Child's Garden of Verses" [2].

[1] [broken link] http://www.geocities.com/~spanoudi/poems/rls04.html
[2] [broken link] http://www.geocities.com/~spanoudi/poems/rls01.html

Auntie's Skirts -- Robert Louis Stevenson

(Poem #450) Auntie's Skirts Whenever Auntie moves around, Her dresses make a curious sound, They trail behind her up the floor, And trundle after through the door. -- Robert Louis Stevenson

        (From 'A Child's Garden of Verses')

What childrens' poet has at some time or the other not succumbed to the
temptation to rhyme 'floor' and 'door'? :) Not that there's anything wrong
with that, of course - indeed, I consider this one of the 'successful' poems
in Stevenson's wildly diverse 'A Child's Garden of Verses'. True, it
presents no deep insight, no stunning revelation. However, it possesses that
rare and welcome quality of working on two entirely separate levels.

Firstly, it is clearly a childrens' poem. Is it a good childrens' poem? Yes
- the meter and rhyme fall very naturally into the sort of singsong chant
that the Very Young delight in repeating ad nauseum. Also the central image
*is* insightful from a child's perspective - I can imagine one reading the
poem and then keeping an eye out the next time he saw an aunt of his,
wondering if her dresses did indeed make a curious sound, or trail behind
her on the floor.

However, there is also a certain underscored pointlessness that appeals to
me on a far more 'sophisticated' level. The very lack of humour, imagery,
comparison, elaboration, surprise, and all the other techniques we expect in
a short poem - the sheer "take it or leave it" presentation of a single
fact, dissociated even from event-specificity by the enclosing 'whenever',
is a stylistic technique verging on imagism, and one that it not easy to get
right. Whatever one might say about Stevenson, there is no denying that he
had a wonderful feel for style and language.

Links:

Here are the other three Stevenson poems we've run in the past:
poem #20, poem #84, and poem #290.

-martin

Bed in Summer -- Robert Louis Stevenson

(Poem #290) Bed in Summer In winter I get up at night And dress by yellow candle-light. In summer quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day. I have to go to bed and see The birds still hopping on the tree, Or hear the grown-up people's feet Still going past me in the street. And does it not seem hard to you, When all the sky is clear and blue, And I should like so much to play, To have to go to bed by day? -- Robert Louis Stevenson

A touch of nostalgia today - this poem charmed and enchanted me when I was a
child, with its hints of faraway lands and strange conditions. A funny
thing, though, was that while I could quote the first two verses from
memory, the very existence of the third came as a surprise to me. Nor was it
a pleasant surprise - while verses one and two have a delightful air of
bemusement, the last verse is, to put it quite frankly, whiny. It's
especially sad since the second verse would have been a fine (if somewhat
abrupt) ending, and left the whole a good (if not great) children's poem.

On the other hand, it is still a pretty nice poem, if a very 'children's'
one - the images manage to be quite evocative without being descriptive, and
the rhythms are satisfyingly strong and regular (something that matters a
lot when  you're a child - take a glance through any ten popular nursery
rhymes). I think Stevenson's fault at the end was an attempt to identify
with his audience; one that, quite sadly, misfired.

m.

Notes: From 'A Child's Garden of Verses', the first poem in the book, in
fact.

For a far better poem from the same source, see 'From a Railway Carriage'
poem #84

And  for the complete 'A Child's Garden of Verses', a set of XLI poems
ranging from the amazingly painful to the truly delightful, see
[broken link] http://geocities.com/~spanoudi/poems/rls02.html#1

From a Railway Carriage -- Robert Louis Stevenson

Sorry - egroups didn't send this properly yesterday, so I'm resending it as
today's poem.

(Poem #84) From a Railway Carriage Faster than fairies, faster than witches, Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches; And charging along like troops in a battle All through the meadows the horses and cattle: All of the sights of the hill and the plain Fly as thick as driving rain; And ever again, in the wink of an eye, Painted stations whistle by. Here is a child who clambers and scrambles, All by himself and gathering brambles; Here is a tramp who stands and gazes; And here is the green for stringing the daisies! Here is a cart runaway in the road Lumping along with man and load; And here is a mill, and there is a river: Each a glimpse and gone forever! -- Robert Louis Stevenson

        (From 'A Child's Garden of Verses')

Stevenson's childrens' poetry had a charm all it's own. Like all good
childrens' verse, this one has a strong sense of rhythm and emphasised
rhymes, delighting as much in the sound of the poem as in what it is saying.
Like all the best poetry, of any sort, this piece also blends form and
content beautifully, the regular metre evoking the rhythms of the train, and
the rhyme scheme rushing the reader along and lending a sense of speed. To
complete the effect, note that each image is contained entirely within its
couplet, splitting the poem into a series of snapshots, 'each a glimpse and
gone forever'.

m.

Notes etc: See 'Requiem', poem #20

For another nice biography of Stevenson, see
<[broken link] http://www.rit.edu/~exb1874/mine/stevenson/stevenson_ind.html>

Requiem -- Robert Louis Stevenson

(Poem #20) Requiem Under the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me; "Here he lies where he longed to be, Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill." -- Robert Louis Stevenson

This poem more or less speaks for itself; it was inscribed on Stevenson's
gravestone as an epitaph. RLS is a lot better known for his marvellous
romances, such as Treasure Island and Kidnapped; though I'd hesitate to
call his poetry 'brilliant', it is nonetheless well-written and enjoyable,
with simple but nicely rhythmic and often surprisingly memorable phrases.

The penultimate line is often given as 'home from _the_ sea'; while I have
no idea which is the correct version, I prefer the one above.

Biographical Note:

  [Stevenson] had shown a desire to write early in life, and once in his
  teens he had deliberately set out to learn the writer's craft by imitating
  a great variety of models in prose and verse. His youthful enthusiasm for
  the Covenanters (i.e., those Scotsmen who banded together to defend their
  version of Presbyterianism in the 17th century) led to his writing The
  Pentland Rising, his first printed work. During his years at the
  university he rebelled against his parents' religion and set himself up as
  a liberal bohemian who abhorred the alleged cruelties and hypocrisies of
  bourgeois respectability.
  [...]
  Stevenson was frequently abroad, most often in France. Two of his journeys
  produced An Inland Voyage (1878) and Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes
  (1879). His career as a writer developed slowly.
  [...]
  It was these early essays, carefully wrought, quizzically meditative in
  tone, and unusual in sensibility, that first drew attention to Stevenson
  as a writer.
        -- Encyclopaedia Britannica

Criticism:

  Stevenson's literary reputation has also fluctuated. The reaction against
  him set in soon after his death: he was considered a mannered and
  imitative essayist or only a writer of children's books. But eventually
  the pendulum began to swing the other way, and by the 1950s his reputation
  was established among the more discerning as a writer of originality and
  power; whose essays at their best are cogent and perceptive renderings of
  aspects of the human condition; whose novels are either brilliant
  adventure stories with subtle moral overtones or original and impressive
  presentations of human action in terms of history and topography as well
  as psychology; whose short stories produce some new and effective
  permutations in the relation between romance and irony or manage to
  combine horror and suspense with moral diagnosis; whose poems, though not
  showing the highest poetic genius, are often skillful, occasionally (in
  his use of Scots, for example) interesting and original, and sometimes (in
  A Child's Garden) valuable for their exhibition of a special kind of
  sensibility.
        -- E.B.

Martin