Poems, by Robert Louis Stevenson, hitherto unpublished/O lady fair and sweet
O LADY FAIR AND SWEET—1875
In this poem, another of Stevenson's rondeau experiments, does he again address the girl who is the subject of so many of his earlier lyrics? If so, with the succeeding poem, "If I had wings, my lady, like a dove," it forms a pair wherein for the first time she is addressed as "My Lady," a form of appellation in consonance with the formal nature of the old French poetry that was at the time providing Stevenson with models. The two poems, as their references to "winter air" and "blinding sleet" indicate, were presumably written in the winter months of 1875, after Stevenson's return from France, and the "noisy street," and "the doleful city row," point to Edinburgh.
O LADY FAIR AND SWEET
O lady fair and sweet
Arise and let us go
Where comes not rain or snow,
Excess of cold or heat,
To find a still retreat
By willowy valleys low
Where silent rivers flow.
There let us turn our feet
O lady fair and sweet,—
Far from the noisy street,
The doleful city row,
Far from the grimy street,
Where in the evening glow
The summer swallows meet,
The quiet mowers mow.
Arise and let us go,
O lady fair and sweet,
For here the loud winds blow,
Here drifts the blinding sleet.