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  • To S. R. Crockett
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To S. R. Crockett

Robert Louis Stevenson

Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how!

Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,
Standing Stones on the vacant wine-red moor,
Hills of sheep, and the howes of the silent vanished races,
And winds, austere and pure!

Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
Hills of home! and to hear again the call;
Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying;
And hear no more at all.


Robert Louis Stevenson

from Songs of Travel (1895), and included in The Collected Poems of Robert Louis Stevenson (Edinburgh University Press, 2003)

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19th century poems English exile graveyards Lothians Placebook Scotland remembrance scottish poems
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Photo of robert louis stevenson staring directly into the camera

Robert Louis Stevenson1850 - 1894

It is sadly ironic that RLS, under whose pen Scotland and the Scottish character burst into life, was exiled to a life and death so far from his native land.
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