Until I discovered his poetry on the Internet, I was unaware that Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island, was also a poet. His poems are similar to Kipling’s in the broader sense of showing fine craftsmanship of verse and rhyme, the sort of poetry that an entire nation could appreciate- whereas in our time, poetry is the domain of decadent elites and their culturally hostile hangers-on, like a person who calls himself “Amiri Baraka”, a black Muslim who was the poet laureate of New Jersey and penned the following lovely piece after 9/11, called “Somebody Blew Up America”.
They say its some terrorist, some
barbaric
A Rab, in
Afghanistan
It wasn’t our American terrorists
It wasn’t the Klan or the Skin heads
Or the them that blows up nigger
Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row
It wasn’t Trent Lott
Or David Duke or Giuliani
Or Schundler, Helms retiring
It wasn’t
the gonorrhea in costume
the white sheet diseases
That have murdered black people
Terrorized reason and sanity
Most of humanity, as they pleases
They say (who say? Who do the saying
Who is them paying
Who tell the lies
Who in disguise
Who had the slaves
Who got the bux out the Bucks
Who got fat from plantations
Who genocided Indians
Tried to waste the Black nation
It continues on this theme ad nauseum for another 5 pages. That’s poetry in 21st century America.
So while this sort of hatred of the majority culture is tolerated and even subsidized by the government, Kipling is banned because of his most infamous poem, “The White Man’s Burden“, and Stevenson is criticized as well, for a little ditty he wrote in his lovely book of children’s poetry called A Child’s Garden of Verses:
Foreign Children
Little Indian, Sioux, or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
Oh! don’t you wish that you were me?
You have seen the scarlet trees
And the lions over seas;
You have eaten ostrich eggs,
And turned the turtle off their legs.
Such a life is very fine,
But it’s not so nice as mine:
You must often as you trod,
Have wearied NOT to be abroad.
You have curious things to eat,
I am fed on proper meat;
You must dwell upon the foam,
But I am safe and live at home.
Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
Oh! don’t you wish that you were me?
You see, this little poem teaches children to hate, don’t you know? Many subsequent printings of ACGOV have omitted this poem in compliance with politically correct demands. This volume is wonderful for children, with or without the omission, though we should vote with our dollars and get the unabridged version if possible.
Now, Stevenson is not a particular favorite of mine, as many of his poems are very sentimental- it’s great poetry, but some of it is not my cup of tea. But the following is one of my favorites, simply titled “Prayer”, and is a wonderful reminder of the days we once enjoyed, when “art” and “culture” were not things you had to protect your children from, but were rather the highest expressions of faith, confidence and heritage in the nation of one’s birth. By steeping our children in the heritage of a healthy past, perhaps they can one day, with God-given talent, restore the great Western cultural traditions that produced the greatest art the world has ever known. And no one will have to pay taxes to support half-literate obscenities masquerading as “poetry”.
Prayer by RL Stevenson
I ask good things that I detest,
With speeches fair;
Heed not, I pray Thee, Lord, my breast,
But hear my prayer.
I say ill things I would not say -
Things unaware:
Regard my breast, Lord, in Thy day,
And not my prayer.
My heart is evil in Thy sight:
My good thoughts flee:
O Lord, I cannot wish aright -
Wish Thou for me.
O bend my words and acts to Thee,
However ill,
That I, whate’er I say or be,
May serve Thee still.
O let my thoughts abide in Thee
Lest I should fall:
Show me Thyself in all I see,
Thou Lord of all.
Bailout Passes:
Look Who's Hosting Sandra:
Weimar Chic:
Two Posts on Palin:
Sarah Palin: