Now Antoninus, in a smiling age, Counts of his life the fifteenth finished stage. The rounded days and the safe years he sees, Nor fears death’s water mounting round his knees. To him remembering not one day is sad, Not one but that its memory makes him glad. So good men lengthen life; and to recall The past is to have twice enjoyed it all.
Where this text comes from
First published in New Poems and Variant Readings (1918). This date is uncertain. Taken from the 1918 Chatto & Windus volume. That is not the first printing: this volume's own preface credits the Bibliophile Society of Boston with having first given these poems light in a privately printed edition. The year of that edition, and which poems it carried, are not established here. [1]
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Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/robert-louis-stevenson_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).
Earlier sources (8)
This poem as JSON or plain text . Line anchors #L1–#L8.
Cite this poem
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894).
“De M. Antonio.” First published in New Poems and Variant Readings (1918).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/robert-louis-stevenson/de-m-antonio/.
Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.
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