The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Vailima ed.)/Volume 8/New Poems/To the Stormy Petrel

by Robert Louis Stevenson

CLXXIII

TO THE STORMY PETREL

TO HIS WIFE, ON HER BIRTHDAY.

EVER perilous
And precious, like an ember from the fire
Or gem from a volcano, we to-day
When the drums of war reverberate in the land
And every face is for the battle blacked—
No less the sky, that over sodden woods
Menaces now in the disconsolate calm
The hurly-burly of the hurricane,
Do now most fitly celebrate your day.

Yet amid turmoil keep for me, my dear,
The kind domestic faggot. Let the hearth
Shine ever as (I praise my honest gods)
In peace and tempest it has ever shone.

March 10th, 1894.