Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/123

 AT MORNING ON THE GARDEN SEAT—1880

In his volume entitled "Literary Friends and Acquaintances," William Dean Howells quotes the saying of Lowell's "which he was fond of repeating at the menace of any form of the transcendental, 'Remember the dinner bell.'" There is always something comforting in the recognition on the part of philosopher or poet of man's interest in so universal and appealing a theme as that of food and drink. In the present delightful little poem, probably written at Silverado, Stevenson not only declares that he dearly loves to drink and eat, and relates how the morning star, the dew and perfumes, the sweet air of dawn all put him in the humor for food, but quaintly emphasizes his avowal by signing his name in full, as if to a credo.

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