Thou strainest through the mountain fern,
A most exiguously thin
Burn.
For all thy foam, for all thy din,
Thee shall the pallid lake inurn,
With well-a-day for Mr. Swin-
Burne!
Take then this quarto in thy fin
And, O thou stoker huge and stern,
The whole affair, outside and in,
Burn!
But save the true poetic kin,
The works of Mr. Robert Burn’
And William Wordsworth upon Tin-
Tern!
Public-domain source text
Thou Strainest Through the Mountain Fern
by Robert Louis Stevenson
From Standard Ebooks · standardebooks/robert-louis-stevenson_poetry
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This is a source transcription from Standard Ebooks, published in Past Poetry’s public-domain archive without line-by-line editorial notes. Public-domain source edition. Availability can vary by territory.
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