Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Poems of Home: V. The Home

The House Beautiful

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)

A NAKED house, a naked moor,

A shivering pool before the door,

A garden bare of flowers and fruit,

And poplars at the garden foot;

Such is the place that I live in,

Bleak without and bare within.

Yet shall your ragged moors receive

The incomparable pomp of eve,

And the cold glories of the dawn

Behind your shivering trees be drawn;

And when the wind from place to place

Doth the unmoored cloud galleons chase,

Your garden blooms and gleams again

With leaping sun and glancing rain;

Here shall the wizard moon ascend

The heavens, in the crimson end

Of day’s declining splendor; here,

The army of the stars appear.

The neighbor hollows, dry or wet,

Spring shall with tender flowers beset;

And oft the morning muser see

Larks rising from the broomy lea,

And every fairy wheel and thread

Of cobweb dew dediamonded.

When daisies go, shall winter time

Silver the simple grass with rime;

Autumnal frosts enchant the pool

And make the cart ruts beautiful.

And when snow bright the moor expands,

How shall your children clap their hands!

To make this earth our heritage,

A cheerful and a changeful page,

God’s intricate and bright device

Of days and seasons doth suffice.