


Youth and Love
Once only by the garden gate
our lips we joined and parted.
I must fulfill an empty fate
and travel the uncharted.
Hail and farewell! I must arise,
Leave here the fatted cattle,
And paint on foreign lands and skies
My Odyssey of battle.
The untented Kosmos my abode,
I pass, a wilful stranger:
My mistress still the open road
And the bright eyes of danger.
Come ill or well, the cross, the crown
The rainbow or the thunder
I fling my soul and body down
For God to plough them under.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
(1850 – 1894)