Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/77

 HOPES—1872

In its subject matter—its insistence on the "hopeful heart"—the kinship of these verses with so many others of Stevenson's is obvious; but both the date and the place of this composition have a rather special interest, inasmuch as 1871, that vital year when turbulent thoughts and emotions first calmed down sufficiently to permit a clear outlook upon life, has now been left behind. Scotland is replaced by Germany, and at Frankfort, in 1872, we find Stevenson writing in that vein of determined hope which was thenceforth to be his greatest source of strength. It is perhaps the only poem that he wrote in Germany, and one wonders whether the words in his autograph at the bottom of the manuscript and in the German script, recording that "Today for the first time I spoke to Elise," establish so pleasant a meeting with some attractive young girl as to suggest an additional reason for the cheerful tenor of the poem.

From the first to the last stanza Stevenson adheres to a line of imagery effective in itself, and characteristic of the introspective youth [ 69 ]