New Poems And Variant Readings

roo STEVENSON'S POEMS
I NOW, O FRIEND, WHOM NOISELESSLY THE SNOWS
I NOW, O friend, whom noiselessly the snows Settle around, and whose small chamber grows Dusk as the sloping window takes its load:
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The kindly hill, as to complete our hap, Has ta'en us in the shelter of her lap; Well sheltered in our slender grove of trees And ring of walls, we sit between her knees ; A disused quarry, paved with rose plots, hung With clematis, the barren womb whence sprung The crow-stepped house itself, that now far seen Stands, like a bather, to the neck in green. A disused quarry, furnished with a seat Sacred to pip^s and meditation meet For such a sunny and retired nook. There in the clear, warm mornings many "a book Has vied with the fair prospect of the hills That, vale on vale, rough brae on brae, upfills Halfway to the zenith all the vacant sky To keep my loose attention. . . . Horace has sat with me whole mornings through : And Montaigne gossiped, fairly false and true; And chattering Pepys, and a few beside That suit the easy vein, the quiet tide,