Page:Ballads, Stevenson, 1890.djvu/80

 Full many a name both here and there,

Full many both now and then.

When I was at home in my father's house

In the land of the naked knee,

Between the eagles that fly in the lift

And the herrings that swim in the sea,

And now that I am a captain-man

With a braw cockade in my hat—

Many a name have I heard," he thought,

"But never a name like that."

III. THE PLACE OF THE NAME.

There fell a war in a woody place,

Lay far across the sea,

A war of the march in the mirk midnight

And the shot from behind the tree,

The shaven head and the painted face,

The silent foot in the wood,

In a land of a strange, outlandish tongue

That was hard to be understood.

It fell about the gloaming

The general stood with his staff,

He stood and he looked east and west

With little mind to laugh. 68