Robert Louis Stevenson

Now When the Numbers of My Years

Now when the number of my years

Is all fulfilled, and I

From sedentary life

Shall rouse me up to die,

Bury me low and let me lie

Under the wide and starry sky.

Joying to live, I joyed to die,

Bury me low and let me lie.

photo by Dr Thomas Barnes

Clear was my soul, my deeds were free,

Honour was called my name,

I fell not back from fear

Nor followed after fame.

Bury me low and let me lie

Under the wide and starry sky.

Joying to live, I joyed to die,

Bury me low and let me lie.

Bury me low in valleys green

And where the milder breeze

Blows fresh along the stream,

Sings roundly in the trees -

Bury me low and let me lie

Under the wide and starry sky.

Joying to live, I joyed to die,

Bury me low and let me lie.

When the sun comes after rain

When the sun comes after rain

And the bird is in the blue,

The girls go down the lane

Two by two.

When the sun comes after shadow 

And the singing of the showers,

The girls go up the meadow,

Fair as flowers.

When the eve comes dusky red

And the moon succeeds the sun,

The girls go home to bed

One by one.

And when life draws to its even

And the day of man is past,

They shall all go home to heaven,

Home at last.

His Epitaph

Under the wide and starry sky

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live, and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

We are not content to pass away entirely from the scenes of

our delight; we would leave, if but in gratitude, a pillar and a legend.

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