Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/96

 LIGHT AS MY HEART WAS LONG AGO—1875

The same form shown in the verses beginning, "In Autumn When the Woods are Red," is followed here in a poem that comes close to the spirit of some of François Villon's lyrics. Stevenson's story, "A Lodging for the Night," based on Villon's life, and his essay on that inspired and interesting reprobate, are among his most sympathetic works in the fields of the short story and of criticism. And it is curious to reflect that while Thoreau, the ascetic New Englander, was the American to whom Stevenson most instinctively reacted, the licentious Villon was, we fancy, his favorite hero in French literature.

But an even more interesting thought that arises from the present verses and from those that belong to their little group of the year 1875, is that just as Stevenson's apprenticeship as a man of letters in Scotland began with attempts at verse writing, so similarly when, on the continent, he sought to improve his workmanship by the study of French forms, it was to poetry that he first turned, and in poetry that he continued his training.

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