dual personalities

Tag: robert louis stevenson

December 3, 2024

Under the wide and starry sky

by chuckofish

We got more snow yesterday and it was very cold. I tell you I am not really ready for this…winter! October was balmy and November wasn’t bad, so digging out the Barbour storm coat was not on my radar. And gloves! Where are my gloves?

At least when it is snowing, it is very quiet in my neighborhood. No leaf blowers!

Anyway, I got a pedicure yesterday, which is something I do now regularly as a result of my chemo-induced neuropathy and getting old. I also scheduled a big trash pickup so that we can get rid of some of the junk in our garage to make room for my SUV which takes up a lot more room than my Mini. And I made a list of all the things I need to get new license plates before heading to the DMV. Oh joy. But I do like that checking-things-off-my-list feeling.

Today we remember Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish author and poet, who died on this day in 1894 while straining to open a bottle of wine for his wife.

He is buried on a spot overlooking the sea in Samoa where he lived at the time.

Based on Stevenson’s poem “Requiem”, the following epitaph is inscribed on his tomb:

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 longed to be
Home is the sailor home from the sea
And the hunter home from the hill

I always hear John Wayne’s voice when I read that, because, as you recall, he recites the poem at the funeral of two sailors (Slug and Squarehead) in They Were Expendable (1945). It is a great scene. The Duke does it perfectly and to great effect–

They were just a couple of blue jackets who did their job.

So a toast to Robert Louis Stevenson and to John Wayne and to all the sailors and hunters home from the hill.

Have a good day! Read some poetry.

4 Comments
June 26, 2018

“The singing heart of June”*

by chuckofish

Screen Shot 2018-06-25 at 10.40.00 AM.png

“How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside.
Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown–
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!”

–  Robert Louis Stevenson, The Swing 

You may have noticed that swings are becoming less common on school playgrounds throughout the country for liability reasons and because school officials are “looking for new ways to engage students in activities using safer equipment.” We are told that more than 200,000 children show up in hospital emergency rooms each year due to playground equipment injuries, according to the National Safety Council. Fewer than 20 of those accidents are fatal, but “swing set danger” looms large in the public’s imagination.**

Well.

I was a timid child. Lots of things scared me, but I loved to swing. And I liked to swing high, the higher the better. Sometimes I would swing and sing at the same time! Talk about feeling free! I mean I was never crazy and I held on tight–not like one of our friends who swears he could swing up and over on the swings at his elementary school. I was no dare-devil, but even timid kids like me can feel like they can fly on a swing. And they can flirt with danger in a way that is an important part of growing up.

Indeed, I’m with old RLS.

*Willa Cather; the illustration is by Mary Blair

**Statistics found here.

6 Comments
November 16, 2012

A Friday prayer: the strength to forbear

by chuckofish

John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife

“Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety, and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavours. If it may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving to one another.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Have a great weekend. Good luck with that quiet mind.

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June 14, 2012

When all the sky is clear and blue

by chuckofish

“In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?”

– Robert Louis Stevenson, Bed in Summer

I remember this so well–going to bed when it was still light outside! The days are long in June in this flyover state!

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January 4, 2012

Back at work

by chuckofish

…with a new Snow & Graham calendar, thanks to daughter # 1.

Well, the Christmas Holidays can be very hectic indeed. First we put up all the decorations and then we take them down. We spend months picking out gifts, wrap them and then tear them open. We clean up. We go to the grocery store (a lot). The family gathers and then they disperse once again. Everyone is so busy! Daughter # 1 moved to NYC over the weekend. Daughter # 2 is in Chicago visiting a friend. And the boy moved into a grown-up apartment yesterday. Phew. It was almost a relief to go back to work for some quiet time!

And so, as I endeavor to regain my equilibrium, I offer this well-known quote from the wonderful Robert Louis Stevenson:

“The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.”

I plan to do some major league cleaning and sorting and arranging in all my empty rooms. Life’s plain, common work is before me! (And that’s a good thing.)

3 Comments