Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson Poems

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
...

I woke before the morning, I was happy all the day,
I never said an ugly word, but smiled and stuck to play.

And now at last the sun is going down behind the wood,
...

Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven with repose;
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.
...

5.

The rain is raining all around,
It falls on field and tree,
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea.
...

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
...

From Child's Garden of Verses

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
...

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
...

My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky.
It's time to take the window to see Leerie going by;
For every night at teatime and before you take your seat,
With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.
...

MOTLEY I count the only wear
That suits, in this mixed world, the truly wise,
Who boldly smile upon despair
And shake their bells in Grandam Grundy's eyes.
...

I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies' skirts across the grass--
...

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
...

When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay,
To keep me happy all the day.
...

The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;
She shines on thieves on the garden wall,
On streets and fields and harbour quays,
And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.
...

We built a ship upon the stairs
All made of the back-bedroom chairs,
And filled it full of soft pillows
To go a-sailing on the billows.
...

Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by.
...

When I was down beside the sea
A wooden spade they gave to me
To dig the sandy shore.
...

What are you able to build with your blocks?
Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
But I can be happy and building at home.
...

Robert Louis Stevenson Biography

Robert Louis Stevenson was born November 13, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the only son of respectable middle-class parents. Throughout his childhood, he suffered chronic health problems that confined him to bed. The strongest influence during his childhood was that of his nurse, Allison Cunnigham, who often read aloud Pilgrim's Progress and The Old Testament, his most direct literary influences during this time. In 1867, he entered Edinburgh University as a science student, where it was tacitly understood that he would follow his father's footsteps and become a civil engineer. Robert, however, had much more of a romantic nature at heart and while obstentiously working for a science degree, he spent much of his time studying French Literature, Scottish history, and the works of Darwin and Spencer. When he confided to his father that he did not want to become an engineer and instead wished to pursue writing, his father was naturally upset. They settled on a compromise ? Robert would study for the Bar and if is literary ambitions failed, he would have a respectable profession to fall back on. In order to fully understand the world in which Stevenson was raised, it is necessary to understand that there were two Edinburghs, both which played a part in molding his personality and outlook. On one hand was New Town, respectable, conventional, deeply religious, and polite. On the other was a much more bohemian Edinburgh, symbolized by brothels and shadiness. The juxtaposition of the two aspects in contrast to each other made a deep impression and strengthened his fascination with the duality of human nature, later providing the theme for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In the autumn of 1873, Stevenson was taken ill with nervous exhaustion and a severe chest condition, consequently, his doctor ordered him to take an extended rest abroad. For the next six months, he convalesced in the South of France, working on essays. On his return to Edinburgh, he spent much of his time writing book reviews and articles and experimenting with short stories. Slowly but surely, he earned a name for himself in journalism and his pieces began appearing in distinguished journals such as The Fortnightly Review. At this time, he met an American married woman, Fanny Vandergrift Osbourne, ten years his senior, whom was in Europe trying to escape her estranged husband's influence. For three years, Stevenson (still in ill health) continued his relationship with her and eventually followed her to San Francisco, where she obtained a divorce from her husband and married Stevenson in May 1880. During this time, he published his first book, An Inland Voyage in 1878, an engaging account of a canoeing holiday in Belgium. In August 1880, the Stevensons returned to England. The story of Stevenson life from this point forward is a story centered on a search of a climate where he could live without the fears of his failing health. He and his wife wintered in the South of France and lived in England from 1880-1887, and this time was marked by an active period of literary achievement. His first novel, Treasure Island, was published in 1883, followed by The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and Kidnapped (1886). For the first time in his life, Stevenson had became a popular author. Upon the death of his father in 1887, Robert Louis Stevenson decided to leave England and sailed for America, where he stayed for a year. In May 1888, accompanied by his wife, his step-son, and his mother, he set sails for the South Seas. Eventually, Stevenson was so enchanted by the life of the South Seas that in December 1889 he bought an estate in Apia, Samoa, convinced that he could never endure the harsh winters of his native Scotland or England. Apia was a perfect location because the climate was tropical but not wild, the people were friendly and hard working, and it possessed a good postal service. He lived at his 300 acre estate, Vailima, in the hills of Apia until his death five years later. The list of his writings for 1890-94 reveals an impressive range of activities. During this time, he completed two of his finest novellas, ?The Beach of Falesa' and The Ebb Tide, two novels, The Wrecker and Catriona, the short stories ?The Bottle Imp,' ?The Isle of voices' and ?the Waif Woman,' and the short pieces collected under the title of Fables. He also worked on a number of novels that he did not live to complete, including St. Ives, The Young Chevalier and Heathercat. He worked with enthusiasm on Weir of Hermiston until the day of his death, December 3, 1894. On that day, he dictated another installment of the novel, seemed in excellent spirits, and was talking to his wife in the evening when he felt a violent pain in his head and almost immediately lost consciousness. He died of a cerebral hemmorauge a few hours later at the age of forty-four.)

The Best Poem Of Robert Louis Stevenson

Love, What Is Love

LOVE - what is love? A great and aching heart;
Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair.
Life - what is life? Upon a moorland bare
To see love coming and see love depart.

Robert Louis Stevenson Comments

Bernard Onoja 14 August 2011

Robert is a poet per excellence.His style is simply but strikes the audience with precision. I would be honored if he can appraise my poems, i would be encouraged by his criticism

125 128 Reply
Fabrizio Frosini 18 January 2016

(from Wiki) Stevenson had always wanted his 'Requiem' inscribed on his tomb: '' Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill. '' - However, the piece is MISQUOTED in many places, including his tomb: Home is the sailor, home from THE sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

237 15 Reply
Iris Shih 15 April 2012

There are a lot of my poems including the elements of rhymes, bits... what's more, fairy tale elements of a child's heart. Welcome.

135 86 Reply
Iris Shih 15 April 2012

Comment about your poem Love Despair - What is despair? After lots of ups and downs – first you deny, then you realize, finally... you have to believe What wins? is … the one who departs first Who loses? is … the one who loves more and insists not to go What if …? Everything is just a game and tact?

132 70 Reply
zorian howard 16 April 2021

this is so cool

0 0 Reply
asta luego 22 October 2019

I can't find your poems.

0 1 Reply
Alefiya kifayat 22 October 2019

This is not a biography

0 0 Reply
Rolanzo francis 13 February 2019

I love your poems

3 2 Reply
zorian howard 16 April 2021

Me to

0 0
Bhagabat Prasad Hotta 28 October 2018

GOOD POET. VERY NICE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR POEMS.

7 8 Reply

Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

The obscurest epoch is to-day.

Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly.

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

The cruellest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his mouth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.

He sows hurry and reaps indigestion.

Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords; and the little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys.

Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords.

You can forgive people who do not follow you through a philosophical disquisition; but to find your wife laughing when you had tears in your eyes, or staring when you were in a fit of laughter, would go some way towards a dissolution of the marriage.

You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with some one else.

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by neglect of many other things.

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.

In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.

Once you are married, there is nothing for you, not even suicide, but to be good.

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

The little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys.

To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.

If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.

So long as we are loved by others I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

To make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men a secret element of gusto.

Everyone lives by selling something, whatever be his right to it.

A faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.

There is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect.

Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.

Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind.

For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!

Pieces of eight! pieces of eight! pieces of eight!

I never weary of great churches. It is my favourite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.

Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal.

Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect.

I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius that I have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption and think it long of coming. Literally no man has more wholly outlived life than I. And still it's good fun.

When it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honour. It is human at least, if not divine.

Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.

Robert Louis Stevenson Popularity

Robert Louis Stevenson Popularity

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