Transcribed from the 1913 Chatto and Windus edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org WEIR OF HERMISTON AN UNFINISHED ROMANCE * * * * * BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON [Picture: Decorative image] FINE-PAPER EDITION * * * * * LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS 1913 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh TO MY WIFE _I saw rain falling and the rainbow drawn_ _On Lammermuir_. _Hearkening I heard again_ _In my precipitous city beaten bells_ _Winnow the keen sea wind_. _And here afar_, _Intent on my own race and place_, _I wrote_. _Take thou the writing_: _thine it is_. _For who_ _Burnished the sword_, _blew on the drowsy coal_, _Held still the target higher_, _chary of praise_ _And prodigal of counsel—who but thou_? _So now_, _in the end_, _if this the least be good_, _If any deed be done_, _if any fire_ _Burn in the imperfect page_, _the praise be thine_. INTRODUCTORY In the wild end of a moorland parish, far out of the sight of any house, there stands a cairn among the heather, and a little by east of it, in the going down of the brae-side, a monument with some verses half defaced. It was here that Claverhouse shot with his own hand the Praying Weaver of Balweary, and the chisel of Old Mortality has clinked on that lonely gravestone. Public and domestic history have thus marked with a bloody finger this hollow among the hills; and since the Cameronian gave his life there, two hundred years ago, in a glorious folly, and without comprehension or regret, the silence of the moss has been broken once again by the report of firearms and the cry of the dying.