Page:The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Vailima Edition, Volume 8, 1922.djvu/548

NEW POEMS The glow of smelting noon, and when the sun

Dips past my westering hill and day is done;

So, bending still over my trade of words,

I hear the morning and the evening birds,

The morning and the evening stars behold;—

So there apart I sit as once of old

Napier in wizard Merchiston; and my

Brown innocent aides in home and husbandry,

Wonder askance, What ails the boss? they ask,

Him, richest of the rich, an endless task

Before the earliest birds or servants stir

Calls and detains him daylong prisoner?

He, whose innumerable dollars hewed

This cleft in the boar- and devil-haunted wood,

And bade therein, from sun to seas and skies,

His many-windowed, painted palace rise

Red-roofed, blue-walled, a rainbow on the hill,

A wonder in the forest glade: he still,

Unthinkable Aladdin, dawn and dark,

Scribbles and scribbles, like a German clerk.

We see the fact, but tell, O tell us why?

My reverend washman and wise butler cry.

And from their lips the unanswered questions drop.

How can he live that does not keep a shop?

And why does he, being acclaimed so rich,

Not dwell with other gentry on the beach?

But harbour, impiously brave,

In the cold, uncanny wood, haunt of the fleeing slave?

The sun and the loud rain here alternate:

Here in the unfathomable hush, the great 534