Robert Louis Stevenson

Youth and Love: I.

Once only by the garden gate
Our lips we joined and parted.
I must fulfil an empty fate
And travel the uncharted.
 
Hail and farewell!  I must arise,
Leave here the fatted cattle,
And paint on foreign lands and skies
My Odyssey of battle.
 
The untented Kosmos my abode,
I pass, a wilful stranger:
My mistress still the open road
And the bright eyes of danger.
 
Come ill or well, the cross, the crown,
The rainbow or the thunder,
I fling my soul and body down
For God to plough them under.

From Songs of Travel

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