New poems and variant readings/Love's Vicissitudes

by Robert Louis Stevenson

LOVE'S VICISSITUDES

As Love and Hope together
Walk by me for a while,
Link-armed the ways they travel
For many a pleasant mile—
Link-armed and dumb they travel,
They sing not, but they smile.

Hope leaving, Love commences
To practise on the lute;
And as he sings and travels
With lingering, laggard foot,
Despair plays obligato
The sentimental flute.

Until in singing garments
Comes royally, at call—
Comes limber-hipped Indiff'rence
Free stepping, straight and tall—
Comes singing and lamenting.
The sweetest pipe of all.