Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/119

 THERE WHERE THE LAND OF LOVE—1876

As the winter of 1876 gave way to spring, Stevenson's spirits greatly improved. His letters to friends were far more numerous in the second half of that year than in the first half, and the charm of Nature reasserted its power over his spirits. In the present fragmentary poem, we find the first lyric indication of the re-appearance of Nature's appeal, though even here, in the comment in his autograph where the briefness of life is imaged forth as a flash between the past and the future, the poet is seen as still under the sway of the sombre thoughts that have darkened his winter.

THERE WHERE THE LAND OF LOVE

There where the land of love,

Grown about by fragrant bushes,

Sunken in a winding valley,

Where the clear winds blow

And the shadows come and go,

And the cattle stand and low [ 105 ]