A poetry collection by Robert Louis Stevenson. The opening lines are playful and personal: they contrast different tastes in drink, reading, and humour (“Not I”), then turn to the making of a small book in Davos. It is worth listening for its rhythm, wit, and intimate reflections on poetry and readership.
Not I Some like drink In a pint pot, Some like to think; Some not. Strong Dutch Cheese, Old Kentucky Rye, Some like these; Not I. Some like Poe And others like Scott, Some like Mrs. Stowe; Some not. Some like to laugh, Some like to cry. Some like chaff; Not I.
Here, perfect to a wish, We offer, not a dish, But just the platter: A book that’s not a book, A pamphlet in the look But not the matter. I own in disarray; As to the flowers of May The frosts of Winter, To my poetic rage, The smallness of the page And of the printer.
As seamen on the seas With song and dance descry Adown the morning breeze An islet in the sky: In Araby the dry, As o’er the sandy plain The panting camels cry To smell the coming rain. So all things over earth A common law obey And rarity and worth Pass, arm in arm, away; And even so, today, The printer and the bard, In pressless Davos, pray Their sixpenny reward.
The pamphlet here presented Was planned and printed by A printer unindent-ed, A bard whom all decry. The author and the printer, With various kinds of skill, Concocted it in Winter At Davos on the Hill. They burned the nightly taper But now the work is ripe Observe the costly paper, Remark the perfect type!
. 201 у време
See how the children in the print Bound on the book to see what’s in’t! O, like these pretty babes, may you Seize and apply this volume too! And while your eye upon the cuts With harmless ardour open and shuts, Reader, may your immortal mind To their sage lessons not be blind.
Readnara
