Page:Ballads, Stevenson, 1890.djvu/60

 Here, in the rocky pit, accursed already of old,

On a stone in the midst of a river, Rua sat and was cold.

"Valley of mid-day shadows, valley of silent falls,"

Rua sang, and his voice went hollow about the walls,

"Valley of shadow and rock, a doleful prison to me,

What is the life you can give to a child of the sun and the sea?"

And Rua arose and came to the open mouth of the glen,

Whence he beheld the woods, and the sea, and houses of men.

Wide blew the riotous trade, and smelt in his nostrils good;

It bowed the boats on the bay, and tore and divided the wood;

It smote and sundered the groves as Moses smote with the rod,

And the streamers of all the trees blew like banners abroad;

And ever and on, in a lull, the trade wind brought him along

A far-off patter of drums and a far-off whisper of song.

Swift as the swallow's wings, the diligent hands on the drum

Fluttered and hurried and throbbed. "Ah, woe that I hear you come,"

Rua cried in his grief, "a sorrowful sound to me,

Mounting far and faint from the resonant shore of the sea!

Woe in the song! for the grave breathes in the singers' breath,

And I hear in the tramp of the drums the beat of the heart of death.

Home of my youth! no more, through all the length of the years,

No more to the place of the echoes of early laughter and tears, 48