Poems, by Robert Louis Stevenson, hitherto unpublished/All night through, raves or broods

1936371Poems, by Robert Louis Stevenson, hitherto unpublished — All night through, raves or broods1921Robert Louis Stevenson

ALL NIGHT THROUGH, RAVES OR BROODS—1876

We have already called attention to the fact that the winter of 1876 was a period of such melancholy brooding for Stevenson, that he lacked the energy even for correspondence, two or three cheerless letters being the sum total of his efforts of that kind; while two poems of that winter, to be found in the Bibliophile edition of 1916, are among the most despondent that came from his pen.

The present poem belongs to the same month, March, as the pair just mentioned, and it was presumably written on the same day as the short poem entitled "Soon Our Friends Perish." The evidence for this is furnished by Stevenson's marginal comment on the previously published manuscript where, after asking why God has deserted him, he adds: "And why does the damned wind rave in my ears?" In the present poem the lines occur—

All night through, raves or broods
The fitful wind among the woods—

the same wind, presumably, as raved on that same night. But, as we so often find in Stevenson, even in his darkest moments, he here goes beyond the pessimism of the other poem, and lets his fancy stray into more hopeful fields of memory.

The verses are a first and never-to-be perfected draft, and their incompletion affords an added testimony of the unstrung condition of the poet's mind.


ALL NIGHT THROUGH, RAVES OR BROODS

All night through, raves or broods
The fitful wind among the woods;
All night through, hark! the rain
Beats upon the window pane.


And still my heart is far away,
Still dwells in many a bygone day,
And still follows hope with [rainbow wing]
Adown the golden ways of spring.


In many a wood my fancy strays,
In many unforgotten Mays,
And still I feel the wandering—
[Manuscript breaks off here.]