Part 9

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, Say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul he sailed on a day Over the sea to Skye.

Give me again all that was there, Give me the sun that shone! Give me the eyes, give me the soul, Give me the lad that’s gone!

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, Say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul he sailed on a day Over the sea to Skye.

Billow and breeze, islands and seas, Mountains of rain and sun, All that was good, all that was fair, All that was me is gone.

XLIII—TO S. R. CROCKETT (On receiving a Dedication)

Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying, Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now, Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying, My heart remembers how!

Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places, Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor, Hills of sheep, and the howes of the silent vanished races, And winds, austere and pure:

Be it granted me to behold you again in dying, Hills of home! and to hear again the call; Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying, And hear no more at all.

Vailima.

XLIV—EVENSONG

The embers of the day are red Beyond the murky hill. The kitchen smokes: the bed In the darkling house is spread: The great sky darkens overhead, And the great woods are shrill. So far have I been led, Lord, by Thy will: So far I have followed, Lord, and wondered still.

The breeze from the enbalmèd land Blows sudden toward the shore, And claps my cottage door. I hear the signal, Lord—I understand. The night at Thy command Comes. I will eat and sleep and will not question more.

Vailima.

Footnotes

{44} This is the same Princess Moë whose charms of person and disposition have been recorded by the late Lord Pembroke in South Sea Bubbles, and by M. Pierre Loti in the Mariage de Loti.

{45} The yacht Casco had been so called by the people of Fakarava in the Paumotus.