Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850–1894). A Child’s Garden of Verses and Underwoods. 1913.

IX. To K. De M.

A LOVER of the moorland bare,

And honest country winds, you were;

The silver-skimming rain you took;

And loved the floodings of the brook,

Dew, frost and mountains, fire and seas,

Tumultuary silences,

Winds that in darkness fifed a tune,

And the high-riding virgin moon.

And as the berry, pale and sharp,

Springs on some ditch’s counterscarp

In our ungenial, native north—

You put your frosted wildings forth,

And on the heath, afar from man,

A strong and bitter virgin ran.

The berry ripened keeps the rude

And racy flavour of the wood.

And you that loved the empty plain

All redolent of wind and rain.

Around you still the curlew sings—

The freshness of the weather clings—

The maiden jewels of the rain

Sit in your dabbled locks again.