Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
Stevenson wrote this poem – intended as his own epitaph – while living in California, fourteen years before his death. But it would forever be associated with his stay in Samoa, where he eventually did die. 
 Unlike his native Edinburgh, or other cities where he had lived, the sky there was not obscured by buildings, and the stars not blocked out by light pollution.
Requiem