Page:The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Vailima Edition, Volume 8, 1922.djvu/587

NEW POEMS Now, I am a Greek

White-robed among the sunshine and the statues

And the fair porticos of carven marble—

Fond of olives and dry sherry,

Good tobacco and clever talk with my fellows,

Free from inordinate cravings.

Why would you hurry me, O evangelist,

You with the bands and the shilling packet of tracts

Greatly reduced when taken for distribution?

Why do you taunt my progress,

O green-spectacled Wordsworth! in beautiful verses,

You, the elderly poet?

So I shall travel forward

Step by step with the rest of my race,

In time, if death should spare me,

I shall come on to a farther stage.

And show you St. Francis of Assisi.

CXCVII

SONG AT DAWN

SEE the dawn creep round the world,

Here damm'd a moment backward by great hills,

There racing o'er the sea.

Down at the round equator,

It leaps forth straight and rapid,

Driving with firm sharp edge the night before it. 573