Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
--R. L. Stevenson, "Requiem"
For more than a century, readers have pondered the strange beginning to one of the most haunting poems in the English language, "Requiem." Who has not wondered how a poet can seem to welcome his own death? Scotsman Robert Louis Stevenson died of a disease so poorly understood in his day that over a few decades its preferred name changed three times, from "phthisis" to "consumption" ...