Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/114

 EH, MAN HENLEY, YOU'RE A DON!

1875

Discussion has been frequent upon Henley's attitude towards the Stevenson of later life, and the over-idealization of the Stevenson of posthumous fame. In the earlier days of their acquaintance, when both were struggling young poets, a very sympathetic friendship existed between them and their minds caught fire from the sparks of each other's conversations. Even their faults of temperament and character brought them closer together. It was only after the public began to set Stevenson on too high a pedestal of virtue that Henley's reaction found voice in expostulation and regret.

Here, in verses written several years before this friendship, from the point of view of literature, reached its consummation in various plays of collaboration, we have a witty and familiar little poem, full of all the tang of the vernacular, and of Stevenson's admiration for Henley; full, too, of encouragement. But in the retrospect, there is a touch of pathos in Stevenson's prophecy, never to be fulfilled, of the time when the whole world [ 100 ]