Friday Poetry: Skerryvore by RL Stevenson

Skerryvore (from the Gaelic Sgeir Mhor meaning big rock) is an scrap of land off the west coast of Scotland. In 1844 a lighthouse was built there; in 1885 Robert Lewis Stevenson published A Child's Garden of Verses which included these two poems:

Skerryvore
For love of lovely words, and for the sake
Of those, my kinsmen and my countrymen,
Who early and late in the windy ocean toiled
To plant a star for seamen, where was then
The surfy haunt of seals and cormorants:
I, on the lintel of this cot, inscribe
The name of a strong tower.

Skerryvore: The Parallel

Here all is sunny, and when the truant gull
Skims the green level of the lawn, his wing
Dispetals roses; here the house is framed
Of kneaded brick and the plumed mountain pine,
Such clay as artists fashion and such wood
As the tree-climbing urchin breaks. But there
Eternal granite hewn from the living isle
And dowelled with brute iron, rears a tower
That from its wet foundation to its crown
Of glittering glass, stands, in the sweep of winds,
Immovable, immortal, eminent.
~Robert Lewis Stevenson

edited on 8/3 to add that the lighthouse was designed by Alan Stevenson, Robert Lewis' uncle.




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:: this post is part of the Friday poetry roundup over at Mentor Texts