Page:Robert Louis Stevenson - a Bookman extra number 1913.djvu/178

 HOME FROM THE HILL

ET the weary body lie

Where he chose its grave,

'Neath the wide and starry sky,

By the Southern wave,

While the island holds her trust

And the hill keeps faith,

Through the watches that divide

The long night of death.

But the spirit free from thrall,

Now goes forth of these

To its birthright, and inherits

Other lands and seas :

We shall find him when we seek him

In an older home,—

By the hills and streams of childhood

'Tis his weird to roam.

In the fields and woods we hear him

Laugh and sing and sigh ;

Or where by the Northern breakers

Sea-birds troop and cry ;

Or where over lonely moorlands

Winter winds fly fleet ;

Or by sunny graves he hearkens

Voices low and sweet.

We have lost him, we have found him :

Mother, he was fain

Nimbly to retrace his footsteps ;

Take his life again

To the breast that first had warmed it,

To the tried and true,—

He has come, our well belovèd,

Scotland, back to you !

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