My Wife
Stevenson’s lines remind Hilary of Pat as he comes to their farewell tryst:
Hilary drew a quick breath: his eyes lit up slowly from within as was their way. She was coming to him over the field… a slip of a girl in a gold and orange sweater, the autumnal sunshine burnishing her dark-brown hair and glinting in her amber eyes; her face glowing with warm, ripe, KISSABLE tints, her body like a young sapling never to be broken, however it might bend.
“Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble dew.”Why couldn’t he have said that instead of Stevenson? It was truer of Pat than it could be of anybody else. Why couldn’t he say to her all the burning and eloquent things he thought of in the night but could never utter the next day?
-Pat of Silver Bush ch.39,2
My Wife
By Robert Louis Stevenson
Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble–dew,
Steel–true and blade–straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate.
Honour, anger, valour, fire;
A love that life could never tire,
Death quench or evil stir,
The mighty master
Gave to her.
Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
A fellow–farer true through life,
Heart–whole and soul–free
The august father
Gave to me.
Source
“My Wife” in Songs of Travel and Other Verses. Online, Internet: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/stevenson/robert_louis/s848ps/#XXVI
