Evensong

You know, sometimes when things around me are moving at a pace that challenges my sanity; when I'm just too darned tired for words; when the tintinabulation of the bells (the bells, the bells... ) in my ears beckons to the Edgar Allen Poe part of me, it's time to take a break and listen to the voice of Robert Louis Stephenson...

EVENSONG

THE embers of the day are red
Beyond the murky hill.
The kitchen smokes: the bed
In the darkling house is spread:
The great sky darkens overhead,
And the great woods are shrill.
So far have I been led,
Lord, by Thy will:
So far I have followed, Lord, and wondered still.

The breeze from the enbalmed land
Blows sudden toward the shore,
And claps my cottage door.
I hear the signal, Lord - I understand.
The night at Thy command
Comes. I will eat and sleep and will not question more.

I love the story of Stevenson's life; it is the story behind his poetry.

"Stevenson had a very uncomplicated view of art; he would have rewritten Horace to assert that it was better to entertain than to instruct...."

And yet. His words often do more than either entertain or instruct. I wonder if folks bound up in power games, "success at any cost" climbs up corporate or or bureaucratic or political ladders ever stop to consider The End. No, really think about it. How many congresscritters or ladder-climbing backstabbers (a partial redundancy? :-) will be able to look at the end of their lives and say,

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 long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

Linked at third world county, Choose Life! Crossposted at CatHouse Chat