Saturday Rave: Bright is the ring of words by Robert Louis Stevenson.

 “To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.”

So wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in An Inland Voyage, and, this being his belief, he shouldn't object to my saying that I like his poetry much better than his books.

And that's even the rhythm is a bit awkward in places, as in Bright is the ring of words, below.

Robert Louis Stevenson came from a family of engineers, but it was clear almost from the beginning that he had to be as a writer. He was a writer in exile, too, for his health, always poor, meant he had to live far from his native Scotland.

Perhaps this poem explains why Robert Louis Stevenson was so sure he had to be a writer.

Bright is the ring of words

When the right man rings them,
Fair the fall of songs
When the singer sings them.
Still they are carolled and said –
On wings they are carried –
After the singer is dead
And the maker is buried.

Low as the singer lies
In the field of heather,
Songs of his fashion bring
The swains together.
And when the west is red
With the sunset embers,
The lover lingers and sings
And the maid remembers.

**

Robert Louis Stevenson died at the age of forty-four. 

He is remembered.

Word To Use Today: swain. This is a word only usually found in old poetry. It means male lover. The word comes, rather oddly, from the Old English word swān which I'm afraid means swineherd.