Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/136

 the days of his apprenticeship in verse some ten years earlier. During the Samoan period he now and then resorted to an irregular sonnet form; but this is as far as we know, the only exact sonnet of the intermediate period. Perhaps his acquaintance with French poetry led him to admit the two lines ending with the same sound—feet, defeat—a practice eschewed by the best English sonneteers.

NAY, BUT I FANCY SOMEHOW, YEAR BY YEAR

Nay, but I fancy somehow, year by year

The hard road waxing easier to my feet;

Nay, but I fancy as the seasons fleet

I shall grow ever dearer to my dear.

Hope is so strong that it has conquered fear;

Love follows, crowned and glad for fear's defeat.

Down the long future I behold us, sweet,

Pass, and grow ever dearer and more near;

Pass and go onward into that mild land

Where the blond harvests slumber all the noon,

And the pale sky bends downward to the sea; [ 115 ]