The Birds among the Bushes May wanton on the spray; But vain for him who tushes The brightness of the day!
The frog among the rushes Sits singing in the blue. By'r la'kin! but these tushes Are wearisome to do!
The task entirely crushes The spirit of the bard: God pity him who tushes - His task is very hard.
The filthy gutter slushes, The clouds are full of rain, But doomed is he who tushes To tush and tush again.
At morn with his hair-brUshes, Still, 'tush' he says, and weeps; At night again he tushes, And tushes till he sleeps.
And when at length he pushes Beyond the river dark - 'Las, to the man who tushes, 'Tush' shall be God's remark!
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
[CHALET LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, MAY 1883.]
DEAR HENLEY, - You may be surprised to hear that I am now a great writer of verses; that is, however, so. I have the mania now like my betters, and faith, if I live till I am forty, I shall have a book of rhymes like Pollock, Gosse, or whom you please. Really, I have begun to learn some of the rudiments of that trade, and have written three or four pretty enough pieces of octosyllabic nonsense, semi-serious, semi-smiling. A kind of prose Herrick, divested of the gift of verse, and you behold the Bard. But I like it.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
HYERES [JUNE 1883].
DEAR LAD, - I was delighted to hear the good news about -. Bravo, he goes uphill fast. Let him beware of vanity, and he will go higher; let him be still discontented, and let him (if it might be) see the merits and not the faults of his rivals, and he may swarm at last to the top-gallant. There is no other way. Admiration is the only road to excellence; and the critical spirit kills, but envy and injustice are putrefaction on its feet.
Thus far the moralist. The eager author now begs to know whether you may have got the other Whistles, and whether a fresh proof is to be taken; also whether in that case the dedication should not be printed therewith; Bulk Delights Publishers (original aphorism; to be said sixteen times in succession as a test of sobriety).
Your wild and ravening commands were received; but cannot be obeyed. And anyway, I do assure you I am getting better every day; and if the weather would but turn, I should soon be observed to walk in hornpipes. Truly I am on the mend. I am still very careful. I have the new dictionary; a joy, a thing of beauty, and - bulk. I shall be raked i' the mools before it's finished; that is the only pity; but meanwhile I sing.
I beg to inform you that I, Robert Louis Stevenson, author of BRASHIANA and other works, am merely beginning to commence to prepare to make a first start at trying to understand my profession. O the height and depth of novelty and worth in any art! and O that I am privileged to swim and shoulder through such oceans! Could one get out of sight of land - all in the blue? Alas not, being anchored here in flesh, and the bonds of logic being still about us.
But what a great space and a great air there is in these small shallows where alone we venture! and how new each sight, squall, calm, or sunrise! An art is a fine fortune, a palace in a park, a band of music, health, and physical beauty; all but love - to any worthy practiser. I sleep upon my art for a pillow; I waken in my art; I am unready for death, because I hate to leave it. I love my wife, I do not know how much, nor can, nor shall, unless I lost her; but while I can conceive my being widowed, I refuse the offering of life without my art. I AM not but in my art; it is me; I am the body of it merely.
And yet I produce nothing, am the author of BRASHIANA and other works: tiddy-iddity - as if the works one wrote were anything but 'prentice's experiments. Dear reader, I deceive you with husks, the real works and all the pleasure are still mine and incommunicable. After this break in my work, beginning to return to it, as from light sleep, I wax exclamatory, as you see.
Sursum Corda: Heave ahead: Here's luck. Art and Blue Heaven, April and God's Larks. Green reeds and the sky-scattering river. A stately music. Enter God!
R.