Page:Stevenson - Songs of Travel (1896).djvu/83

Rh Augments his treasury of lore,

Eager in age as erst in youth

To catch an art, to learn a truth,

To paint on the internal page

A clearer picture of the age.

His age, you say? But ah, not so!

In his lone isle of long ago,

A royal Lady of Shalott,

Sea-sundered, he beholds it not;

He only hears it far away.

The stress of equatorial day

He suffers; he records the while

The vapid annals of the isle;

Slaves bring him praise of his renown,

Or cackle of the palm-tree town;

The rarer ship and the rare boat

He marks; and only hears remote,

Where thrones and fortunes rise and reel,

The thunder of the turning wheel.

67