Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/101

 POEM FOR A CLASS RE-UNION—1875

Mr. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, himself an author and a man described as charming in his personality, was the Master referred to in the third line of this poem. It was at his private school in Frederick Street, Edinburgh, that Stevenson during the years 1864-1867 had formed the friendships that led him, some years later, to attend the class re-union for which this poem was written.

POEM FOR A CLASS RE-UNION

Whether we like it, or don't,

There's a sort of bond in the fact

That we all by one master were taught,

By one master were bullied and whackt.

And now all the more when we see

Our class in so shrunken a state

And we, who were seventy-two,

Diminished to seven or eight.

One has been married, and one

Has taken to letters for bread;

Several are over the seas;

And some I imagine are dead. [ 89 ]