Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/143

 plans or bidding his friends farewell, the young author, ill and almost penniless, travelled on an emigrant ship toward a strange land where the woman he loved was awaiting him. It was in 1879 that Stevenson embarked; and the closing months of that year and the early months of 1880, constitute the period when his fortune was at its nadir, with sickness, and moments almost of starvation and despair, very nearly pulling him under. But even so, numerous poems of those days give evidence of that will and courage which he never quite lost, and in the present verses we find the poor emigrant raising his voice in songs of home. By the time—two years later—when he recorded in these experimental verses the memories of that difficult ocean voyage, home associations had been renewed, and he was again in Europe, with a wife who had at once won her way into the affections of his parents.

YES, I REMEMBER, AND STILL REMEMBER WAILING

Yes, I remember, and still remember wailing

Wind in the clouds and rainy sea-horizon,

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