Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/49

 TAKE NOT MY HAND AS MINE ALONE—1871

While in various poems of this year Stevenson thinks of himself as one who shall be a leader in recruiting humanity for endeavors towards fairer goals than the past has for the most part set, he here writes in a more modest vein, and emphasizes the fact that his hand is but one in a chain of helpfulness, and that the real debt is to those great bygone leaders from whom he has caught his inspiration.

TAKE NOT MY HAND AS MINE ALONE

Take not my hand as mine alone—

You do not trust to me—

I hold the hand of greater men

Too far before to see.

Follow not me, who only trace

Stoop-head the prints of those

Our mighty predecessors, whom

The darknesses enclose.

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