Transcribed from the 1918 Chatto & Windus edition by DavidPrice,
BY
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1918
All Stevensonians owe a debt ofgratitude to the Bibliophile Society of Boston for havingdiscovered the following poems and given them light in aprivately printed edition, thus making them known, in fact, tothe world at large. Otherwise they would have remainedscattered and hidden indefinitely in the hands of variouscollectors. They will be found extraordinarily interestingin their self-revelation, and some, indeed, are so intimate andpersonal that one understands why Stevenson withheld them fromall eyes save his own. The love-poems in particular, thoughthey are of very unequal merit, possess in common a reallyaffecting sincerity. That Stevenson should have preservedthese poems through all the vicissitudes of his wandering lifeshows how dearly he must have valued them; and shows, too, Ithink, beyond any contradiction, that he meant they should beultimately published.
LLOYD OSBOURNE.
| PAGE |
PRAYER | |
LO! IN THINE HONEST EYES IREAD | |
THOUGH DEEP INDIFFERENCE SHOULDDROWSE | |
MY HEART, WHEN FIRST THE BLACKBIRDSINGS | |
I DREAMED OF FOREST ALLEYSFAIR | |
ST. MARTIN’SSUMMER | |
DEDICATION | |
THE OLD CHIMÆRAS, OLDRECEIPTS | |
PRELUDE | |
THE VANQUISHED KNIGHT | |
TO THE COMMISSIONERS OF NORTHERNLIGHTS | |
THE RELIC TAKEN, WHA |