Industrious pirate! see him sweep The lonely bosom of the deep, And daily the horizon scan From Hatteras or Matapan. Be sure, before that pirate’s old, He will have made a pot of gold, And will retire from all his labours And be respected by his neighbors. You also scan your life’s horizon For all that you can clap your eyes on.
Where this text comes from
First published in The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Appendix (1898). This date is uncertain. Taken from the 1898 Appendix volume of the Edinburgh Edition. For most of these verses that is not the first printing: the volume reproduces in facsimile the Davos Press cuts and rhymes that Stevenson wrote and engraved between the autumn of 1880 and the summer of 1882 and that his stepson Lloyd Osbourne printed at the time. The volume's own bibliographical note states that only the two Moral Tales, 'Robin and Ben' and 'The Builder's Doom', are printed here for the first time. Which Davos booklet printed a given rhyme, and in what year, is 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)
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Cite this poem
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894).
“Industrious Pirate! See Him Sweep.” First published in The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Appendix (1898).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/robert-louis-stevenson/industrious-pirate-see-him-sweep/.
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