[Michael Cantor]

Travel
by Robert Louis Stevenson

I should like to rise and go
Where the golden apples grow;--
Where below another sky
Parrot islands anchored lie
And, watched by cockatoos and goats,
Lonely Crusoes building boats;--
Where in sunshine reaching out,
Eastern cities, miles about,
Are with mosque and minaret
Among sandy gardens set,
And the rich good from near and far
Hang for sale in the bazaar,--
Where the Great Wall round China goes,
And on one side the desert blows,
And with bell and voice and drum
Cities on the other hum;--
Where are forests, hot as fire,
Wide as England, tall as a spire,
Full of apes and cocoa-nuts
And the negro hunters' huts;--
Where the knotty crocodile
Lies and blinks in the Nile,
And the red flamingo flies
Hunting fish before his eyes,--
Where in jungles, near and far,
Man-devouring tigers are,
Lying close and giving ear
Lest the hunt be drawing near,
Or a comer-by be seen
Swinging in a palanquin,--
There among the desert sands
Some deserted city stands,
All its children, sweep and prince,
Grown to manhood ages since,
Not a foot in street or house,
Not a stir of child or mouse,
And when kindly falls the night,
In all the town no spark of light.
There I'll come when I'm a man
With a camel caravan;
Light a fire in the gloom
of some dusty dining-room;
See the pictures on the walls,
Heroes, fights and festivals,
And in a corner find the toys
Of the old Egyptian boys.


Comments:

Since criticism is not one of my gifts, I am simply going to give my personal history with the following poem. When I had just begun to read poetry, at about age 7, I was given "A Child's Garden of Verses". This poem enchanted me, and I date my ambition to travel from the day I read it. I immediately memorized the first four lines, and they stayed with me long after I had forgotten the book. In this internet age I was able to find the poem again -- and also to buy the book for 99 cents. I'll just add that a few years ago when I was standing virtually alone in Fatehpur Sikri (the weather being too hot for any tourist with brains), I felt that I had at last arrived "where among the desert sands/Some deserted city stands" . Here is the poem whose magic has never faded.

[Michael Cantor]

Comments by Distinguished Guest Amit Majmudar:

Ah, Robert Louis Stevenson. He (like Verne, Dumas, and Conan Doyle) has the most fortunate fate a writer can have: He is loved. He isn’t read just because he’s assigned, and he isn’t revered because august critics hype him in monographs and book-length studies. He does, simply, irresistible writing, perennially of interest.

This has, in part, to do with his origins in “boy literature.” His most successful novels had boys for heroes, and many of his best poems were written for children. This childlike delight in simplicity and a good story and speed, matched to a matchless imagination (on display in this poem), has made Stevenson a permanent writer in spite of the century-long “high literary” obsession with obscurity. This poem is also a fine companion to Masefield’s—the longing for escape.

I have found that his poetry does not work as well when he speaks to adults, with the exception of his self-penned epitaph, my favorite among the self-penned epitaphs in our literature. (I prefer it to both Yeats’s and Shakespeare’s.)

Stevenson also has the enviable privilege of being one of the favorite writers of Jorge Luis Borges.

[Janice D. Soderling]

I cut my teeth on "A Child's Garden of Verses" I remember it as one of my very first books around the age of four. And apropos nothing, once when I was walking in Scotland I passed a cave wherein RLS was said to have sat composing Treasure Island (I think it was). It was an old path that ran alongside a river and was the by-road leading from village to village. There was a golf course nearby. It rained all day but it was a good walk.

This is not a crit but a celebration of how poems (literature) become part of our lives and memories and forms us. Yes, I do believe poetry can change the world, at least it can form us, and we can change the world.

[Nigel Mace]

At last - Janice and I share something - a love and respect for RLS. I lived for many years almost within sight of his house near Canonmills, my eldest daughter is a Catriona, my father adapted three of his works for BBC radio and I've known all his poetry and most of his prose all my life - and loved it - and one of my precious memories of teaching at Dartmouth was visiting the studies for, and cast of, what was to become his memorial in the studio of Augustus Saint-Gaudens at Cornish - a photo of the view from whose windows sits in front of my desk in the Borders. I was also inspired by Paul Dehn's parodies, largely from the Child's Garden and aimed at the nuclear issue, to embark on my own parody anthology aimed at the Iraq war, in which I also plundered the same source . I absolutely agree with the comment on his 'auto-epitaph' (only challenged, for humour if not for feeling, and not in verse - by Spike Milligan's "I told you I was poorly") and his verse, including the one chosen, has a deceptively simple charm and truthfulness which refreshes and touches the heart - mine at any rate, and Janice's too!

A lovely selection and how approrpiately simply presented and urged.

[Maryann Corbett]

I'm sad to read that any Sphere member says "criticism is not one of my gifts," since I've always figured our reason for being here should be to serve as critics of each other's work.

There's some virtue in being reminded of this poem later in life, since the language and images are more evocative to a person with more reading and more experience than they are to a child.

That said, remembering "A Child's Garden..." at this late date recalls that there are some poems in it that are more questionable. I wonder whether a young child understands the irony and the colonialist attitudes in the poem that begins, "Little Indian, Sioux or Crow...."

[Bill Carpenter]

"The old Egyptian boys" -- what a capper! The immortality of childhood in us, in those of olden times, and the undying wisdom of that childhood -- bravo!

[Jean L. Kreiling]

It was a great idea to post this one on the same day as the Masefield—both ostensibly about travel, both doing some “cataloging,” and of course, each allowing the reader to extrapolate for himself or herself, deciding just what kind of escape is being celebrated. But they are quite different poems. This one rambles more widely, and has more people in it—which must make it more appealing to some. I’m drawn more to the tight focus of the Masefield poem, but my preference also has a great deal to do with what I hear as better music in the Masefield poem.

Our appreciator shied away from offering a detailed critique, but his/her comment that the poem initiated an “ambition to travel” speaks volumes about the power of the poem. I especially like the word “ambition”—suggesting a striving for broader horizons that is as important as the actual acquisition of stamps on the passport.

I wasn’t sure under which thread to post this comment! Would love to see further reactions to the pairing of these two poems.

[Julie Steiner]

Stevenson's obsession with travel and activity is particularly poignant when one realizes how much of his life, from childhood through adulthood, he spent in bed, ill.

He wrote in an 1892 letter from Samoa--which he twice tried, and failed (due to poor health), to leave, before dying there in 1894--"I wish to die in my boots; no more Land of Counterpane for me. To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from a horse — ay, to be hanged, rather than pass again through that slow dissolution."

It so happens that The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is my family's current read-aloud. If it's any comfort, Maryann, the intro to our edition mentions how vigorously Stevenson championed the rights of native Hawaiians and Samoans against racist European and American politicians. In fact, the 1892 publication of his history of Samoa resulted in the recall of two particularly unsavory European officials, and for a time Stevenson feared that it might result in his own deportation, poor health or no.