Prayers written at Vailimia, by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Prayers Written At Vailimawas transcribed from the1916 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price,fantasy figures for rainy days proofing byStephen Booth.

A Lowden Sabbath Mornwas transcribed from the 1898Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, [email protected]

PRAYERS
WRITTEN AT VAILIMA
and
A LOWDEN
SABBATH MORN

by Robert Louis Stevenson

PRAYERS
WRITTEN AT VAILIMA

BY
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
WITH
AN INTRODUCTION
BY
MRS. STEVENSON

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
MDCCCCXVI

p.vINTRODUCTION

In every Samoan household theday is closed with prayer and the singing of hymns. The omission of this sacred duty would indicate, notonly a lack of religious training in the house chief, buta shameless disregard of all that is reputable in Samoan sociallife.  No doubt, to many, the eveningservice is no more than a duty fulfilled.  The childwho says his prayer at his mother’s knee can have no realconception of the meaning of the words he lisps so readily,yet he goes to his little bed with a sense of heavenlyprotection that he would miss were the prayerforgotten.  The average Samoan is but a larger childin most things, andp. viwould lay an uneasy head on hiswooden pillow if he had not joined, evenperfunctorily, in the evening service.  Withmy husband, prayer, the direct appeal, was anecessity.  When he was happy he felt impelled tooffer thanks for that undeserved joy; when in sorrow,or pain, to call for strength to bear what must beborne.

Vailima lay up some three miles of continual rise fromApia, and more than half that distance from the nearestvillage.  It was a long way for a tired man to walkdown every evening with the sole purpose of joining in familyworship; and the road through the bush was dark,and, to the Samoan imagination, beset withsupernatural terrors.  Wherefore, p. viias soonas our household had fallen into a regular routine, andthe bonds of Samoan family life began to draw us more closelytogether, Tusitala felt the necessity of including ourretainers in our evening devotions.  I suppose ourswas the only white man’s family in all Samoa, exceptthose of the missionaries, where the day naturally endedwith this homely, patriarchal custom.  Notonly were the religious scruples of the natives satisfied,but, what we did not foresee, our ownrespectability—and incidentally that of ourretainers—became assured, and the influenceof Tusitala increased tenfold.

After all work and meals were finished, the‘pu,’ or war conch, was sounded fromthe back veranda andp. viiithe front, so that itmight be heard by all.  I don’t think it everoccurred to us that there was any incongruity in the use of thewar conch for the peaceful invitation to prayer.  Inresponse to its summons the white members of the family tooktheir usual places in one end of the large hall, while theSamoans—men, women, andchildren—trooped in through all the open doors,some carrying lanterns if the evening were dark, allmoving quietly and dropping with Samoan decorum in a widesemicircle on the floor beneath a great lamp that hung from theceiling.  The service began by my son reading achapter from the Samoan Bible, Tusitala following with aprayer in English, sometimes impromptu, but moreoften from the notes in this littlep. ixbook,interpolating or changing with the circumstance of theday.  Then came the singing of one or more hymns inthe native tongue, and the recitation in concert of theLord’s Prayer, also in Samoan.  Many ofthese hymns were set to ancient tunes, very wild andwarlike, and strangely at variance with the missionarywords.

Sometimes a passing band of hostile warriors, withblackened faces, would peer in at us through the openwindows, and often we were forced to pause until thestrangely savage, monotonous noise of the native drums hadceased; but no Samoan, nor, I trust,white person, changed his reverent attitude. Once, I remember a look of surprised dismaycrossingp.xthe countenance of Tusitala when my son,contrary to his usual custom of reading the next chapterfollowing that of yesterday, turned back the leaves of hisBible to find a chapter fiercely denunciatory, and onlytoo applicable to the foreign dictators of distractedSamoa.  On another occasion the chief himself broughtthe service to a sudden check.  He had just learnedof the treacherous conduct of one in whom he had every reason totrust.  That evening the prayer seemed unusuallyshort and formal.  As the singing stopped he aroseabruptly and left the room.  I hastened afterhim, fearing some sudden illness.  ‘Whatis it?’ I asked.  ‘It isthis,’ was the reply; ‘I am not yet fitto say, “Forgive us our trespassesp. xias weforgive those who trespass against us.”’

It is with natural reluctance that I touch upon the lastprayer of my husband’s life.  Many havesupposed that he showed, in the wording of thisprayer, that he had some premonition of his approachingdeath.  I am sure he had no suchpremonition.  It was I who told the assembled familythat I felt an impending disaster approaching nearer andnearer.  Any Scot will understand that my statementwas received seriously.  It could not be, wethought, that danger threatened any one within thehouse; but Mr. Graham Balfour, my husband’scousin, very near and dear to us, was away on aperilous cruise.  Our fears followed the variousvessels, more orp. xiiless unseaworthy, in whichhe was making his way from island to island to the atoll wherethe exiled king, Mataafa, was at that timeimprisoned.  In my husband’s last prayer,the night before his death, he asked that we should begiven strength to bear the loss of this dear friend,should such a sorrow befall us.

p.xiiiCONTENTS

p. 1FORSUCCESS

Lord, behold our family hereassembled.  We thank Thee for this place in which we dwell;for the love that unites us; for the peace accorded us this day;for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, thework, the food, and the bright skies, that make our livesdelightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth, and ourfriendly helpers in this foreign isle.  Let peace abound inour small company.  Purge out of every heart the lurkinggrudge.  Give us grace and strength to forbear and topersevere.  Offenders, give us the grace to accept and toforgive offenders.  Forgetful ourselves, help us to bearcheerfully the forgetfulness of others.  Give us courage andgaiety and the quiet mind.  Spare to us our friends, softento us our enemies.  Bless us, if it may be, in all ourinnocent endeavours.  If it may not, give us the strength toencounter that which is to come, that we be brave in peril,constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changesof fortune, and, down to the gates of death, loyal and loving oneto another.  As the clay to the potter, as the windmill tothe wind, as children of their sire, we beseech of Thee this helpand mercy for Christ’s sake.

p. 3FORGRACE

Grant that we here before Thee maybe set free from the fear of vicissitude and the fear of death,may finish what remains before us of our course without dishonourto ourselves or hurt to others, and, when the day comes, may diein peace.  Deliver us from fear and favour: from mean hopesand cheap pleasures.  Have mercy on each in his deficiency;let him be not cast down; support the stumbling on the way, andgive at last rest to the weary.

p. 4ATMORNING

The day returns and brings us thepetty round of irritating concerns and duties.  Help us toplay the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kindfaces, let cheerfulness abound with industry.  Give us to goblithely on our business all this day, bring us to our restingbeds weary and content and undishonoured, and grant us in the endthe gift of sleep.

p.5EVENING

We come before Thee, O Lord, in theend of thy day with thanksgiving.

Our beloved in the far parts of the earth, those who are nowbeginning the labours of the day what time we end them, and thosewith whom the sun now stands at the point of noon, bless, help,console, and prosper them.

Our guard is relieved, the service of the day is over, and thehour come to rest.  We resign into thy hands our sleepingbodies, our cold hearths, and open doors.  Give us to awakewith smiles, give us to labour smiling.  As the sun returnsin the east, so let our patience be renewed with dawn; as the sunlightens the world, so let our loving-kindness make bright thishouse of our habitation.

p. 7ANOTHERFOR EVENING

Lord, receive our supplications forthis house, family, and country.  Protect the innocent,restrain the greedy and the treacherous, lead us out of ourtribulation into a quiet land.

Look down upon ourselves and upon our absent dear ones. Help us and them; prolong our days in peace and honour. Give us health, food, bright weather, and light hearts.  Inwhat we meditate of evil, frustrate our will; in what of good,further our endeavours.  Cause injuries to be forgot andbenefits to be remembered.

Let us lie down without fear and awake and arise withexultation.  For his sake, in whose words we nowconclude.

p. 8IN TIMEOF RAIN

We thank Thee, Lord, for the gloryof the late days and the excellent face of thy sun.  Wethank Thee for good news received.  We thank Thee for thepleasures we have enjoyed and for those we have been able toconfer.  And now, when the clouds gather and the rainimpends over the forest and our house, permit us not to be castdown; let us not lose the savour of past mercies and pastpleasures; but, like the voice of a bird singing in the rain, letgrateful memory survive in the hour of darkness.  If therebe in front of us any painful duty, strengthen us with the graceof courage; if any act of mercy, teach us tenderness andpatience.

p. 9ANOTHERIN TIME OF RAIN

Lord, Thou sendest down rain uponthe uncounted millions of the forest, and givest the trees todrink exceedingly.  We are here upon this isle a fewhandfuls of men, and how many myriads upon myriads of stalwarttrees!  Teach us the lesson of the trees.  The seaaround us, which this rain recruits, teems with the race of fish;teach us, Lord, the meaning of the fishes.  Let us seeourselves for what we are, one out of the countless number of theclans of thy handiwork.  When we would despair, let usremember that these also please and serve Thee.

p. 10BEFOREA TEMPORARY SEPARATION

To-day we go forth separate, someof us to pleasure, some of us to worship, some upon duty. Go with us, our guide and angel; hold Thou before us in ourdivided paths the mark of our low calling, still to be true towhat small best we can attain to.  Help us in that, ourmaker, the dispenser of events—Thou, of the vast designs,in which we blindly labour, suffer us to be so far constant toourselves and our beloved.

p. 11FORFRIENDS

For our absent loved ones weimplore thy loving-kindness.  Keep them in life, keep themin growing honour; and for us, grant that we remain worthy oftheir love.  For Christ’s sake, let not our belovedblush for us, nor we for them.  Grant us but that, and grantus courage to endure lesser ills unshaken, and to accept death,loss, and disappointment as it were straws upon the tide oflife.

p. 12FORTHE FAMILY

Aid us, if it be thy will, in ourconcerns.  Have mercy on this land and innocentpeople.  Help them who this day contend in disappointmentwith their frailties.  Bless our family, bless our foresthouse, bless our island helpers.  Thou who hast made for usthis place of ease and hope, accept and inflame our gratitude;help us to repay, in service one to another, the debt of thineunmerited benefits and mercies, so that, when the period of ourstewardship draws to a conclusion, when the windows begin to bedarkened, when the bond of the family is to be loosed, thereshall be no bitterness of remorse in our farewells.

Help us to look back on the long way that Thou hast broughtus, on the long days in which we have been served, not accordingto our deserts, but our desires; on the pit and the miry clay,the blackness of despair, the horror of misconduct, from whichour feet have been plucked out.  For our sins forgiven orprevented, for our shame unpublished, we bless and thank Thee, OGod.  Help us yet again and ever.  So order events, sostrengthen our frailty, as that day by day we shall come beforeThee with this song of gratitude, and in the end we be dismissedwith honour.  In their weakness and their fear, the vesselsof thy handiwork so pray to Thee, so praise Thee.  Amen.

p.14SUNDAY

We beseech Thee, Lord, to behold uswith favour, folk of many families and nations gathered togetherin the peace of this roof, weak men and women subsisting underthe covert of thy patience.  Be patient still; suffer us yetawhile longer;—with our broken purposes of good, with ouridle endeavours against evil, suffer us awhile longer to endure,and (if it may be) help us to do better.  Bless to us ourextraordinary mercies; if the day come when these must be taken,brace us to play the man under affliction.  Be with ourfriends, be with ourselves.  Go with each of us to rest; ifany awake, temper to them the dark hours of watching; and whenthe day returns, return to us, our sun and comforter, and call usup with morning faces and with morning hearts—eager tolabour—eager to be happy, if happiness shall be ourportion—and if the day be marked for sorrow, strong toendure it.

We thank Thee and praise Thee; and in the words of him to whomthis day is sacred, close our oblation.

p. 16FORSELF-BLAME

Lord, enlighten us to see the beamthat is in our own eye, and blind us to the mote that is in ourbrother’s.  Let us feel our offences with our hands,make them great and bright before us like the sun, make us eatthem and drink them for our diet.  Blind us to the offencesof our beloved, cleanse them from our memories, take them out ofour mouths for ever.  Let all here before Thee carry andmeasure with the false balances of love, and be in their own eyesand in all conjunctures the most guilty.  Help us at thesame time with the grace of courage, that we be none of us castdown when we sit lamenting amid the ruins of our happiness or ourintegrity: touch us with fire from the altar, that we may be upand doing to rebuild our city: in the name and by the method ofhim in whose words of prayer we now conclude.

p. 18FORSELF-FORGETFULNESS

Lord, the creatures of thy hand,thy disinherited children, come before Thee with their incoherentwishes and regrets: Children we are, children we shall be, tillour mother the earth hath fed upon our bones.  Accept us,correct us, guide us, thy guilty innocents.  Dry our vaintears, wipe out our vain resentments, help our yet vainerefforts.  If there be any here, sulking as children will,deal with and enlighten him.  Make it day about that person,so that he shall see himself and be ashamed.  Make it heavenabout him, Lord, by the only way to heaven, forgetfulness ofself, and make it day about his neighbours, so that they shallhelp, not hinder him.

p. 19FORRENEWAL OF JOY

We are evil, O God, and help us tosee it and amend.  We are good, and help us to bebetter.  Look down upon thy servants with a patient eye,even as Thou sendest sun and rain; look down, call upon the drybones, quicken, enliven; recreate in us the soul of service, thespirit of peace; renew in us the sense of joy.

A LOWDEN SABBATH MORN

BY ROBERT LOUISSTEVENSON

I

The clinkum-clanko’ Sabbath bells
Noo to the hoastin’ rookery swells,
Noo faintin’ laigh in shady dells,
         Sounds faran’ near,
An’ through the simmer kintry tells
         Its taleo’ cheer.

II

An’ noo, to that melodious play,
A deidly awn the quiet sway—
A’ ken their solemn holiday,
         Bestialan’ human,
The singin’ lintie on the brae,
         Therestin’ plou’man.

III

He, mair than a’ the lave o’men,
His week completit joys to ken;
Half-dressed, he daunders out an’ in,
         Perplextwi’ leisure;
An’ his raxt limbs he’ll rax again
           Wi’ painfü’ pleesure.

IV

The steerin’ mither strang afit
Noo shoos the bairnies but a bit;
Noo cries them ben, their Sinday shüit
         To scart uponthem,
Or sweeties in their pouch to pit,
         Wi’blessin’s on them.

V

The lasses, clean frae tap to taes,
Are busked in crunklin’ underclaes;
The gartened hose, the weel-filled stays,
         The nakitshift,
A’ bleached on bonny greens for days,
         An’white’s the drift.

VI

An’ noo to face the kirkward mile
The guidman’s hat o’ dacent style,
The blackit shoon, we noon maun fyle
         As white’sthe miller:
A waefü’ peety tae, to spile
         The wartho’ siller.

VII

Our Marg’et, aye sae keen to crack,
Douce-stappin’ in the stoury track,
Her emeralt goun a’ kiltit back
         Frae snawycoats,
White-ankled, leads the kirkward pack
         Wi’ DauvitGroats.

VIII

A thocht ahint, in runkled breeks,
A’ spiled wi’ lyin’ by for weeks,
The guidman follows closs, an’ cleiks
         The sonsiemisses;
His sarious face at aince bespeaks
         The day thatthis is.

IX

And aye an’ while we nearer draw
To whaur the kirkton lies alaw,
Mair neebours, comin’ saft an’ slaw
         Frae herean’ there,
The thicker thrang the gate, an’ caw
         The stour inair.

X

But hark! the bells frae nearer clang
To rowst the slaw, their sides they bang
An’ see! black coats a’ready thrang
         The greenkirkyaird;
And at the yett, the chestnuts spang
         That brocht thelaird.

XI

The solemn elders at the plate
Stand drinkin’ deep the pride o’ state:
The practised hands as gash an’ great
         As Lordso’ Session;
The later named, a wee thing blate
         In theirexpression.

XII

The prentit stanes that mark the deid,
Wi’ lengthened lip, the sarious read;
Syne way a moraleesin’ heid,
         An thenan’ there
Their hirplin’ practice an’ their creed
         Try hard tosquare.

XIII

It’s here our Merren lang has lain,
A wee bewast the table-stane;
An’ yon’s the grave o’ Sandy Blane;
         An’further ower,
The mither’s brithers, dacent men!
         Lie a’ thefower.

XIV

Here the guidman sall bide awee
To dwall amang the deid; to see
Auld faces clear in fancy’s e’e;
         Belike tohear
Auld voices fa’in saft an’ slee
         On fancy’sear.

XV

Thus, on the day o’ solemn things,
The bell that in the steeple swings
To fauld a scaittered faim’ly rings
         Its walcomescreed;
An’ just a wee thing nearer brings
         The quickan’ deid.

XVI

But noo the bell is ringin’ in;
To tak their places, folk begin;
The minister himsel’ will shüne
         Be up thegate,
Filled fu’ wi’ clavers about sin
         An’man’s estate.

XVII

The tünes are up—French, tobe shüre,
The faithfü’ French, an’ twa-threemair;
The auld prezentor, hoastin’ sair,
         Wales out theportions,
An’ yirks the tüne into the air
         Wi’ queercontortions.

XVIII

Follows the prayer, the readin’ next,
An’ than the fisslin’ for the text—
The twa-three last to find it, vext
         But kindo’ proud;
An’ than the peppermints are raxed,
         An’southernwood.

XIX

For noo’s the time whan pows are seen
Nid-noddin’ like a mandareen;
When tenty mithers stap a preen
         Insleepin’ weans;
An’ nearly half the parochine
         Forget theirpains.

XX

There’s just a waukrif’ twa orthree:
Thrawn commentautors sweer to ’gree,
Weans glowrin’ at the bumlin’ bee
         Onwindie-glasses,
Or lads that tak a keek a-glee
         At sonsielasses.

XXI

Himsel’, meanwhile, frae whaur hecocks
An’ bobs belaw the soundin’-box,
The treesures of his words unlocks
         Wi’prodigality,
An’ deals some unco dingin’ knocks
         Toinfidality.

XXII

Wi’ snappy unction, hoo he burkes
The hopes o’ men that trust in works,
Expounds the fau’ts o’ ither kirks,
         An’ shawsthe best o’ them
No muckle better than mere Turks,
         When a’sconfessed o’ them.

XXIII

Bethankit! what a bonny creed!
What mair would ony Christian need?—
The braw words rumm’le ower his heid,
         Nor steer thesleeper;
And in their restin’ graves, the deid
         Sleep aye thedeeper.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

It may be guessed by some that I had a certain parish in myeye, and this makes it proper I should add a word ofdisclamation.  In my time there have been two ministers inthat parish.  Of the first I have a special reason to speakwell, even had there been any to think ill.  The second Ihave often met in private and long (in the due phrase) “satunder” in his church, and neither here nor there have Iheard an unkind or ugly word upon his lips.  The preacher ofthe text had thus no original in that particular parish; but whenI was a boy he might have been observed in many others; he wasthen (like the schoolmaster) abroad; and by recent advices, itwould seem he has not yet entirely disappeared.

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