Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/30

 essayist, romancer, correspondent, and writer of travels, he keeps step with his great peers, and like them he has arrived at the bourne of permanent and large renown.

Of more specific comment upon the present new poems there seems to be little need, since Mr. Hellman has covered the important points in his introductory notes. Still it may be desirable to call attention here to the strong influence exerted on the early and notable poem, "The Mill House," by one of Stevenson's favorite poets—now dead just a century—John Keats. The curious individuality of "The Well-Head," the note of poetic intensity in the poem beginning, "I am like one that has sat alone"—due, perhaps, to the influence of Heine, who was one of Stevenson's early masters despite a repugnance to the German language sometimes expressed in the correspondence—the singular wealth of poetical material dissociated from the needed technical skill in handling to be observed in "To a Youth," the courage with its touch of bravado, attributable in part to frail health, displayed in "Since I am sworn to live my life,"—one of the experiments in French forms [ 24 ]