Poems, by Robert Louis Stevenson, hitherto unpublished/The Well-Head
THE WELL-HEAD—1869
The "Prayer," which was the opening poem in the 1916 Bibliophile edition of Stevenson manuscripts, was written in October, 1869; and to the month of March of that year belongs the present poem, composed also in a spirit of religious reverence, yet with an interesting element of doubt as to the superiority of a future life over man's "dear world of hill and plain."
The "mottoes for the beginning," jotted down by Stevenson and here retained,[1] show the source of the theme, and incidentally establish the identity of the "Ayrshire peasant" who might otherwise have been mistaken for Robert Burns. But the young Stevenson is unable to follow Sir Thomas Browne, or the eighteenth century John Stevenson, in finding in Nature, or in Nature's creatures, God the Creator. The closing stanzas show his passionate desire for such consummation, but the poem as a whole does not follow the Hebraic attitude, adopted by Christianity, of perceiving God in his works. Stevenson distinctly states how difficult it is with him; how
The creatures will not let me see
The great creator of them all;
and the poem reveals the quandary of one caught up in religious yearning, who is yet preeminently a Pagan in his devotion to Nature in itself. The very title suggests the duality of the young Stevenson's mental struggle, the "well-head" being both the natural source of physical waters, and the divine source of life's spiritual stream.
THE WELL-HEAD
The withered rushes made a flame
Across the marsh of rusty red;
The dreary plover ever came
And sang above the old well-head.
About it crouch the junipers,
Green-black and dewed with berries white,
And in the grass the water stirs,
Aloud all day, aloud all night.
The spring has scarcely come, 'tis said;
Yet sweet and pleasant art thou still,
'Mong withered rushes, old well-head,
Upon the sallow-shouldered hill.
The grass from which these waters came,
These waters swelling from the sod,
Had been a bible unto some,
A grave phylactery of God.
The Ayrshire peasant, years ago,
Drank down religion in a cool
Deep draught of waters such as flow
From out this pebbly little pool.
But different far is it with me,
Here, where the piping curlews call;
The creatures will not let me see
The great creator of them all.
And I should choose to go to sleep,
With Merlin in Broceliande,
To hear the elm boughs hiss and sweep,
In summer winds on either hand.
To cling to forest-trees and grass
And this dear world of hill and plain,
For fear, whatever came to pass,
God would not give as good again.
And some may use the gospel so,
That is a pharos unto me,
And guide themselves to hell, although
Their chart should lead them unto Thee.
Lord, shut our eyes or shut our mind,
Or give us love, in case we fall;
'Tis better to go maim and blind
Than not to reach the Lord at all.
- ↑ MOTTOES FOR THE BEGINNING
"To thoughtful observators the whole world is a philactery and everything we see an item of the wisdom, power or goodness of God." Sir T. Browne's Christain Morals, Part III.
"And (God) gradually manifested Himself to me more and more when viewing His works, till at last I saw His glorious being and perfections shine forth brightly in a refreshing drink of water which I took"—"A rare-Soul-strengthening and Comforting Cordial, by John Stevenson, Land Labourer in the Parish of Daily in Carrick, who died in the year 1728"—Select Biographies: Woodrow Society.