Poems, by Robert Louis Stevenson, hitherto unpublished/I have a friend; I have a story
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 her is shown in many of his early lyrics; but when (we must believe because of parental objection), he was forced to break with this girl whose status and antecedents may have justified his family's opposition, and when in 1872 he was sent by his parents to the continent, her love may well have changed to the hatred prophesied in the closing lines of the following verses.
Analyzing the poem from the point of view here taken we are confronted in the first stanza with a quarrel between the lovers. It is barely possible that a misunderstanding, due to some cause no longer ascertainable, led to the break in relations; but far more probably the approaching separation was the cause of a scene in which Stevenson was upbraided and misjudged. The second stanza leads to the surmise that although agreeing to a temporary separation. Stevenson had promised loyalty to the girl if she would remain true to him. In the third stanza, with the passionate expression of his love for her, appears one of those sentences that belong only to his early days—even then very rarely, for later in life he never attributed the baffling cruelty of existence to God. The phrase he used is that of a desperate mood; and how little hope he had of regaining the affection of his beloved is set forth in the last line of the closing stanza where he says, "A while, and she will only hate."
I HAVE A FRIEND; I HAVE A STORY
I have a friend; I have a story;
I have a life that's hard to live;
I love; my love is all my glory;
I have been hurt and I forgive.
I have a friend; none could be better;
I stake my heart upon my friend!
I love; I trust her to the letter;
Will she deceive me in the end?
She is my love, my life, my jewel;
My hope, my star, my dear delight.
God! but the ways of God are cruel,—
That love should bow the knee to spite!
She loves, she hates,—a foul alliance!
One King shall rule in one estate.
I only love; 'tis all my science;
A while, and she will only hate.