Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/142

 YES, I REMEMBER, AND, STILL REMEMBER WAILING—1881

The comment at the bottom of the manuscript page—

would seem to establish the place, as well as the year of the composition of these verses, wherein the poet uses, for metrical experimentation, the memories of his first voyage to America. The discussions of John Addington Symonds, Horatio F. Brown and Stevenson—men interested in certain classical forms of verse—led Stevenson to various successful efforts in English Alcaics, a group of such poems being included in the two-volume Bibliophile edition of Stevenson's poems. With this group belong the present verses, written at Davos in 1881; and they are of special interest because the attempt in rhymeless verses in the first eleven lines is followed by a rhymed rendering of the same theme in the last eight lines.

We know of no other poem of Stevenson's, based on that adventurous sea trip when, after having left home without announcing his [ 119 ]