Read "To Princess Kaiulani" by Robert Louis Stevenson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
[Written in April to Kaiulani in the April of her age; and at Waikiki, within easy walk of Kaiulani's banyan! When she comes to my land and her father's, and the rain beats upon the window (as I fear it will), let her look at this page; it will be like a weed gathered and pressed at home; and she will remember her own islands, and the shadow of the mighty tree; and she will hear the peacocks screaming in the dusk and the wind blowing in the palms; and she will think of her father sitting there alone.
-- R. L. S.]
Forth from her land to mine she goes, / The island maid, the island rose, / Light of heart and bright of face: / The daughter of a double race.
Her islands here, in Southern sun, / Shall mourn their Kaiulani gone, / And I, in her dear banyan shade, / Look vainly for my little maid.
But our Scots islands far away / Shall glitter with unwonted day, / And cast for once their tempests by / To smile in Kaiulani's eye.
Honolulu.