English Poetry. Robert Louis Stevenson. Songs of Travel and Other Verses. 2. Youth and Love. 1. Роберт Льюис Стивенсон.

Robert Louis Stevenson (Роберт Льюис Стивенсон)

Songs of Travel and Other Verses. 2. Youth and Love. 1

ONCE only by the garden gate
Our lips we joined and parted.
I must fulfil an empty fate
And travel the uncharted.

Hail and farewell! I must arise,
Leave here the fatted cattle,
And paint on foreign lands and skies
My Odyssey of battle.

The untented Kosmos my abode,
I pass, a wilful stranger:
My mistress still the open road
And the bright eyes of danger.

Come ill or well, the cross, the crown,
The rainbow or the thunder,
I fling my soul and body down
For God to plough them under.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s other poems: