Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/162

 RIVERS AND WINDS AMONG THE TWISTED HILLS—1890-1894

Obviously a fragment of a poem written in the Samoan days, these verses show how entirely Stevenson has left behind him the active and intense emotional life of the past, and now, among the rivers and winds and twisted hills of his South Sea island, keeps the tranquil brow of reposeful thought, though well knowing that Death is not far off.

RIVERS AND WINDS AMONG THE TWISTED HILLS

Rivers and winds among the twisted hills,

Hears, and his hearing slowly fills,

And hearkens, and his face is lit,

Life facing, Death pursuing it.

As with heaped bees at hiving time

The boughs are clotted, as (ere prime)

Heaven swarms with stars, or the city street

Pullulates with passing feet;

So swarmed my senses once, that now

Repose behind my tranquil brow,

Unsealed, asleep, quiescent, clear;

Now only the vast shapes I hear— [ 137 ]