linguistic:translation, stylistic:tone
Death

On 3 December 1894, Stevenson was talking to his wife and straining to open a bottle of wine when he suddenly exclaimed, "What's that?", then asked his wife, "Does my face look strange?", and collapsed. (Some sources have stated that he was, instead, attempting to make mayonnaise when he collapsed.) He died within a few hours, at the age of 44, due to a stroke. The Samoans insisted on surrounding his body with a watch-guard during the night and on bearing him on their shoulders to nearby Mount Vaea, where they buried him on a spot overlooking the sea on land donated by British Acting Vice Consul Thomas Trood. Based on Stevenson's poem Requiem, the following epitaph is inscribed on his tomb:

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 This be the verse you grave for me Here he lies where he longed to be Home is the sailor home from the sea And the hunter home from the hill

Stevenson was loved by the Samoans, and his tombstone epitaph was translated to a Samoan song of grief. The requiem appears on the eastern side of the grave. On the western side the biblical passage of Ruth 1:16-17 is inscribed:

Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: And thy people shall be my people, and thy God shall be my God: Where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried.

The ensign flag draped over his coffin in Samoa was returned to Edinburgh and now resides in a glass case over the fireplace of rooms in Edinburgh University's Old College owned by The Speculative Society, of which he was a member.