Consolation

 by Robert Louis Stevenson

Consolation

Though he, that ever kind and true,

Kept stoutly step by step with you,

Your whole long, gusty lifetime through,

Be gone a while before,

Be now a moment gone before,

Yet, doubt not, soon the seasons shall restore

Your friend to you.

He has but turned the corner — still

He pushes on with right good will,

Through mire and marsh, by heugh and hill,

That self-same arduous way —

That self-same upland, hopeful way,

That you and he through many a doubtful day

Attempted still.

He is not dead, this friend — not dead,

But in the path we mortals tread

Got some few, trifling steps ahead

And nearer to the end;

So that you too, once past the bend,

Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend

You fancy dead.

Push gaily on, strong heart! The while

You travel forward mile by mile,

He loiters with a backward smile

Till you can overtake,

And strains his eyes to search his wake,

Or whistling, as he sees you through the brake,

Waits on a stile. 

For Richmond's Garden Wall 

WHEN Thomas set this tablet here,

Time laughed at the vain chanticleer;

And ere the moss had dimmed the stone,

Time had defaced that garrison.

Now I in turn keep watch and ward

In my red house, in my walled yard

Of sunflowers, sitting here at ease

With friends and my bright canvases.

But hark, and you may hear quite plain

Time's chuckled laughter in the lane. 

Sonnet V 

Not undelightful, friend, our rustic ease

To grateful hearts; for by especial hap,

Deep nested in the hill's enormous lap,

With its own ring of walls and grove of trees,

Sits, in deep shelter, our small cottage - nor

Far-off is seen, rose carpeted and hung

With clematis, the quarry whence she sprung,

O mater pulchra filia pulchrior,

Whither in early spring, unharnessed folk,

We join the pairing swallows, glad to stay

Where, loosened in the hills, remote, unseen,

From its tall trees, it breathes a slender smoke

To heaven, and in the noon of sultry day

Stands, coolly buried, to the neck in green.