Prayers Written At Vailima by Robert Louis Stevenson
Scanned and proofed by David Price 
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Second proofing by Stephen Booth





Prayers Written At Vailima




INTRODUCTION



In every Samoan household the day is closed with prayer and the 
singing of hymns.  The omission of this sacred duty would indicate, 
not only a lack of religious training in the house chief, but a 
shameless disregard of all that is reputable in Samoan social life.  
No doubt, to many, the evening service is no more than a duty 
fulfilled.  The child who says his prayer at his mother's knee can 
have no real conception of the meaning of the words he lisps so 
readily, yet he goes to his little bed with a sense of heavenly 
protection that he would miss were the prayer forgotten.  The 
average Samoan is but a larger child in most things, and would lay 
an uneasy head on his wooden pillow if he had not joined, even 
perfunctorily, in the evening service.  With my husband, prayer, 
the direct appeal, was a necessity.  When he was happy he felt 
impelled to offer thanks for that undeserved joy; when in sorrow, 
or pain, to call for strength to bear what must be borne.

Vailima lay up some three miles of continual rise from Apia, and 
more than half that distance from the nearest village.  It was a 
long way for a tired man to walk down every evening with the sole 
purpose of joining in family worship; and the road through the bush 
was dark, and, to the Samoan imagination, beset with supernatural 
terrors.  Wherefore, as soon as our household had fallen into a 
regular routine, and the bonds of Samoan family life began to draw 
us more closely together, Tusitala felt the necessity of including 
our retainers in our evening devotions.  I suppose ours was the 
only white man's family in all Samoa, except those of the 
missionaries, where the day naturally ended with this homely, 
patriarchal custom.  Not only were the religious scruples of the 
natives satisfied, but, what we did not foresee, our own 
respectability - and incidentally that of our retainers - became 
assured, and the influence of Tusitala increased tenfold.

After all work and meals were finished, the 'pu,' or war conch, was 
sounded from the back veranda and the front, so that it might be 
heard by all.  I don't think it ever occurred to us that there was 
any incongruity in the use of the war conch for the peaceful 
invitation to prayer.  In response to its summons the white members 
of the family took their usual places in one end of the large hall, 
while the Samoans - men, women, and children - trooped in through 
all the open doors, some carrying lanterns if the evening were 
dark, all moving quietly and dropping with Samoan decorum in a wide 
semicircle on the floor beneath a great lamp that hung from the 
ceiling.  The service began by my son reading a chapter from the 
Samoan Bible, Tusitala following with a prayer in English, 
sometimes impromptu, but more often from the notes in this little 
book, interpolating or changing with the circumstance of the day.  
Then came the singing of one or more hymns in the native tongue, 
and the recitation in concert of the Lord's Prayer, also in Samoan.  
Many of these hymns were set to ancient tunes, very wild and 
warlike, and strangely at variance with the missionary words.

Sometimes a passing band of hostile warriors, with blackened faces, 
would peer in at us through the open windows, and often we were 
forced to pause until the strangely savage, monotonous noise of the 
native drums had ceased; but no Samoan, nor, I trust, white person, 
changed his reverent attitude.  Once, I remember a look of 
surprised dismay crossing the countenance of Tusitala when my son, 
contrary to his usual custom of reading the next chapter following 
that of yesterday, turned back the leaves of his Bible to find a 
chapter fiercely denunciatory, and only too applicable to the 
foreign dictators of distracted Samoa.  On another occasion the 
chief himself brought the service to a sudden check.  He had just 
learned of the treacherous conduct of one in whom he had every 
reason to trust.  That evening the prayer seemed unusually short 
and formal.  As the singing stopped he arose abruptly and left the 
room.  I hastened after him, fearing some sudden illness.  'What is 
it?' I asked.  'It is this,' was the reply; 'I am not yet fit to 
say, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass 
against us."'

It is with natural reluctance that I touch upon the last prayer of 
my husband's life.  Many have supposed that he showed, in the 
wording of this prayer, that he had some premonition of his 
approaching death.  I am sure he had no such premonition.  It was I 
who told the assembled family that I felt an impending disaster 
approaching nearer and nearer.  Any Scot will understand that my 
statement was received seriously.  It could not be, we thought, 
that danger threatened any one within the house; but Mr. Graham 
Balfour, my husband's cousin, very near and dear to us, was away on 
a perilous cruise.  Our fears followed the various vessels, more or 
less unseaworthy, in which he was making his way from island to 
island to the atoll where the exiled king, Mataafa, was at that 
time imprisoned.  In my husband's last prayer, the night before his 
death, he asked that we should be given strength to bear the loss 
of this dear friend, should such a sorrow befall us.



Contents


For Success
For Grace
At Morning
Evening
Another For Evening
In Time of Rain
Another in Time of Rain
Before a Temporary Separation
For Friends
For the Family
Sunday
For Self-Blame
For Self-Forgetfulness
For Renewal of Joy



FOR SUCCESS



LORD, behold our family here assembled.  We thank Thee for this 
place in which we dwell; for the love that unites us; for the peace 
accorded us this day; for the hope with which we expect the morrow; 
for the health, the work, the food, and the bright skies, that make 
our lives delightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth, 
and our friendly helpers in this foreign isle.  Let peace abound in 
our small company.  Purge out of every heart the lurking grudge.  
Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere.  Offenders, 
give us the grace to accept and to forgive offenders.  Forgetful 
ourselves, help us to bear cheerfully the forgetfulness of others.  
Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind.  Spare to us our 
friends, soften to us our enemies.  Bless us, if it may be, in all 
our innocent endeavours.  If it may not, give us the strength to 
encounter that which is to come, that we be brave in peril, 
constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of 
fortune, and, down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to 
another.  As the clay to the potter, as the windmill to the wind, 
as children of their sire, we beseech of Thee this help and mercy 
for Christ's sake.



FOR GRACE



GRANT that we here before Thee may be set free from the fear of 
vicissitude and the fear of death, may finish what remains before 
us of our course without dishonour to ourselves or hurt to others, 
and, when the day comes, may die in peace.  Deliver us from fear 
and favour:  from mean hopes and cheap pleasures.  Have mercy on 
each in his deficiency; let him be not cast down; support the 
stumbling on the way, and give at last rest to the weary.



AT MORNING



THE day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating 
concerns and duties.  Help us to play the man, help us to perform 
them with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with 
industry.  Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, 
bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonoured, 
and grant us in the end the gift of sleep.



EVENING



WE come before Thee, O Lord, in the end of thy day with 
thanksgiving.

Our beloved in the far parts of the earth, those who are now 
beginning the labours of the day what time we end them, and those 
with whom the sun now stands at the point of noon, bless, help, 
console, and prosper them.

Our guard is relieved, the service of the day is over, and the hour 
come to rest.  We resign into thy hands our sleeping bodies, our 
cold hearths, and open doors.  Give us to awake with smiles, give 
us to labour smiling.  As the sun returns in the east, so let our 
patience be renewed with dawn; as the sun lightens the world, so 
let our loving-kindness make bright this house of our habitation.



ANOTHER FOR EVENING



LORD, receive our supplications for this house, family, and 
country.  Protect the innocent, restrain the greedy and the 
treacherous, lead us out of our tribulation into a quiet land.

Look down upon ourselves and upon our absent dear ones.  Help us 
and them; prolong our days in peace and honour.  Give us health, 
food, bright weather, and light hearts.  In what we meditate of 
evil, frustrate our will; in what of good, further our endeavours.  
Cause injuries to be forgot and benefits to be remembered.

Let us lie down without fear and awake and arise with exultation.  
For his sake, in whose words we now conclude.



IN TIME OF RAIN



WE thank Thee, Lord, for the glory of the late days and the 
excellent face of thy sun.  We thank Thee for good news received.  
We thank Thee for the pleasures we have enjoyed and for those we 
have been able to confer.  And now, when the clouds gather and the 
rain impends over the forest and our house, permit us not to be 
cast down; let us not lose the savour of past mercies and past 
pleasures; but, like the voice of a bird singing in the rain, let 
grateful memory survive in the hour of darkness.  If there be in 
front of us any painful duty, strengthen us with the grace of 
courage; if any act of mercy, teach us tenderness and patience.



ANOTHER IN TIME OF RAIN



LORD, Thou sendest down rain upon the uncounted millions of the 
forest, and givest the trees to drink exceedingly.  We are here 
upon this isle a few handfuls of men, and how many myriads upon 
myriads of stalwart trees!  Teach us the lesson of the trees.  The 
sea around us, which this rain recruits, teems with the race of 
fish; teach us, Lord, the meaning of the fishes.  Let us see 
ourselves for what we are, one out of the countless number of the 
clans of thy handiwork.  When we would despair, let us remember 
that these also please and serve Thee.



BEFORE A TEMPORARY SEPARATION



TO-DAY we go forth separate, some of us to pleasure, some of us to 
worship, some upon duty.  Go with us, our guide and angel; hold 
Thou before us in our divided paths the mark of our low calling, 
still to be true to what small best we can attain to.  Help us in 
that, our maker, the dispenser of events - Thou, of the vast 
designs, in which we blindly labour, suffer us to be so far 
constant to ourselves and our beloved.



FOR FRIENDS



FOR our absent loved ones we implore thy loving-kindness.  Keep 
them in life, keep them in growing honour; and for us, grant that 
we remain worthy of their love.  For Christ's sake, let not our 
beloved blush for us, nor we for them.  Grant us but that, and 
grant us courage to endure lesser ills unshaken, and to accept 
death, loss, and disappointment as it were straws upon the tide of 
life.



FOR THE FAMILY



AID us, if it be thy will, in our concerns.  Have mercy on this 
land and innocent people.  Help them who this day contend in 
disappointment with their frailties.  Bless our family, bless our 
forest house, bless our island helpers.  Thou who hast made for us 
this place of ease and hope, accept and inflame our gratitude; help 
us to repay, in service one to another, the debt of thine unmerited 
benefits and mercies, so that, when the period of our stewardship 
draws to a conclusion, when the windows begin to be darkened, when 
the bond of the family is to be loosed, there shall be no 
bitterness of remorse in our farewells.

Help us to look back on the long way that Thou hast brought us, on 
the long days in which we have been served, not according to our 
deserts, but our desires; on the pit and the miry clay, the 
blackness of despair, the horror of misconduct, from which our feet 
have been plucked out.  For our sins forgiven or prevented, for our 
shame unpublished, we bless and thank Thee, O God.  Help us yet 
again and ever.  So order events, so strengthen our frailty, as 
that day by day we shall come before Thee with this song of 
gratitude, and in the end we be dismissed with honour.  In their 
weakness and their fear, the vessels of thy handiwork so pray to 
Thee, so praise Thee.  Amen.



SUNDAY



WE beseech Thee, Lord, to behold us with favour, folk of many 
families and nations gathered together in the peace of this roof, 
weak men and women subsisting under the covert of thy patience.  Be 
patient still; suffer us yet awhile longer; - with our broken 
purposes of good, with our idle endeavours against evil, suffer us 
awhile longer to endure, and (if it may be) help us to do better.  
Bless to us our extraordinary mercies; if the day come when these 
must be taken, brace us to play the man under affliction.  Be with 
our friends, be with ourselves.  Go with each of us to rest; if any 
awake, temper to them the dark hours of watching; and when the day 
returns, return to us, our sun and comforter, and call us up with 
morning faces and with morning hearts - eager to labour - eager to 
be happy, if happiness shall be our portion - and if the day be 
marked for sorrow, strong to endure it.

We thank Thee and praise Thee; and in the words of him to whom this 
day is sacred, close our oblation.



FOR SELF-BLAME



LORD, enlighten us to see the beam that is in our own eye, and 
blind us to the mote that is in our brother's.  Let us feel our 
offences with our hands, make them great and bright before us like 
the sun, make us eat them and drink them for our diet.  Blind us to 
the offences of our beloved, cleanse them from our memories, take 
them out of our mouths for ever.  Let all here before Thee carry 
and measure with the false balances of love, and be in their own 
eyes and in all conjunctures the most guilty.  Help us at the same 
time with the grace of courage, that we be none of us cast down 
when we sit lamenting amid the ruins of our happiness or our 
integrity:  touch us with fire from the altar, that we may be up 
and doing to rebuild our city:  in the name and by the method of 
him in whose words of prayer we now conclude.



FOR SELF-FORGETFULNESS



LORD, the creatures of thy hand, thy disinherited children, come 
before Thee with their incoherent wishes and regrets:  Children we 
are, children we shall be, till our mother the earth hath fed upon 
our bones.  Accept us, correct us, guide us, thy guilty innocents.  
Dry our vain tears, wipe out our vain resentments, help our yet 
vainer efforts.  If there be any here, sulking as children will, 
deal with and enlighten him.  Make it day about that person, so 
that he shall see himself and be ashamed.  Make it heaven about 
him, Lord, by the only way to heaven, forgetfulness of self, and 
make it day about his neighbours, so that they shall help, not 
hinder him.



FOR RENEWAL OF JOY



WE are evil, O God, and help us to see it and amend.  We are good, 
and help us to be better.  Look down upon thy servants with a 
patient eye, even as Thou sendest sun and rain; look down, call 
upon the dry bones, quicken, enliven; recreate in us the soul of 
service, the spirit of peace; renew in us the sense of joy.