Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/155

 AYE, MON, IT'S TRUE—1885

In a letter written from Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth, in February, 1885, to John Addington Symonds, Stevenson tells of "two thundering influenzas" that he had caught in the previous August and November. He had recovered with difficulty from the latter attack. His ill health had "painfully upset" Mrs. Stevenson, and he himself confesses to feeling "a little old and fagged." Yet, as always, his courage and his philosophical humor stood him in good stead; and even as he lay very ill on his sick bed he could write such a bright little poem as the following lines in the Scots dialect.

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