Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/73

 I HAVE A FRIEND; I HAVE A STORY

(1872?)

While Stevenson's remarkable poem beginning "God Gave to Me a Child In Part" first published in the Bibliophile edition, was placed in the section entitled "Poems of Uncertain Date," the suggestion was made that it belonged to the early seventies. It was during that same period (presumably 1872, though possibly 1871) that the present kindred poem was doubtless written. The internal evidence is too strong for any other assumption, since there was apparently only one woman in Stevenson's life who, although he was devoted to her, might yet have had reason to hate him. We know her merely as "Claire," the name inscribed marginally by Stevenson on the manuscript of "Swallows Travel To and Fro,"—verses which in 1873 were composed with her in mind. She was the Edinburgh girl who was in all probability the prospective mother of that unborn child lamented by Stevenson in the poem, "God Gave To Me a Child in Part," referred to above. The depth of his affection for [ 65 ]