The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Vailima ed.)/Volume 8/New Poems/The Cruel Mistress
CXCIV
THE CRUEL MISTRESS
HERE let me rest, here nurse the uneasy qualm
That yearns within me;
And to the heaped-up sea,
Sun-spangled in the quiet afternoon,
Sing my devotions.
In the sun, at the edge of the down,
The whin-pods cackle
In desultory volleys;
And the bank breathes in my face
Its hot sweet breath—
Breath that stirs and kindles,
Lights that suggest, not satisfy—
Is there never in life or nature
An opiate for desire?
Has everything here a voice,
Saying "I am not the goal;
Nature is not to be looked at alone;
Her breath, like the breath of a mistress,
Her breath also,
Parches the spirit with longing
Sick and enervating longing."
Well, let the matter rest.
I rise and brush the windle-straws
Off my clothes; and lighting another pipe
Stretch myself over the down.
Get thee behind me, nature!
I turn my back on the sun
And face from the grey new town at the foot of the bay.
I know an amber lady
Who has her abode
At the lips of the street
In prisons of coloured glass.
I had rather die of her love
Than sicken for you, O Nature!
Better be drunk and merry
Than dreaming awake!
Better be Falstaff than Obermann!