An English Breeze
UP
with
the
sun,
the
breeze
arose,
Across
the
talking
corn
she
goes,
And
smooth
she
rustles
far
and
wide
Through
all
the
voiceful
countryside.
Through
all
the
land
her
tale
she
tells;
She
spins,
she
tosses,
she
compels
The
kites,
the
clouds,
the
windmill
sails
And
all
the
trees
in
all
the
dales.
God
calls
us,
and
the
day
prepares
With
nimble,
gay
and
gracious
airs:
And
from
Penzance
to
Maidenhead
The
roads
last
night
He
watered.
God
calls
us
from
inglorious
ease,
Forth
and
to
travel
with
the
breeze
While,
swift
and
singing,
smooth
and
strong
She
gallops
by
the
fields
along.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born at Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 13, 1850. He was a sickly youth, and an only son, for whom his parents had high hopes. When at last Stevenson was able to attend school, he did extremely well and entered the university at sixteen. His family expected him to become a lighthouse engineer, a family profession, but Stevenson agreed, as a compromise, to study law instead. He was a young rebel; he thought that his parents' religion was an abomination, and he soon became known as a bohemian, ranting about bourgeois hypocrisy.