52 Sir Sidney Colvin [Feb. 10, 



may be surprised," he writes from Hyeres to Mr. Henley, " to hear 

 that I am now a great writer of verse, that is, however so. Really, 

 I have begun to learn some of the rudiments of that trade, and have 

 written three or four pretty enough pieces of octosyllabic nonsense, 

 semi-serious, semi-smiling. A kind of prose Herrick, divested of the 

 gift of verse, and you behold the Bard. But I like it." The fact is 

 that some of these sets of meditative octosyllabice are excellent both 

 in substance and form, and would take a high place in any lesser 

 man's work ; whether you take one almost wholly smiling, like " The 

 House Beautiful," from Underwoods, or one deeply serious like 

 " The Woodman," written during his labour of clearing the jungle at 

 Vailima. Excellent again, and by no means to be left out of any 

 estimate of his work — next, indeed, I should say, in affectionate grace 

 of feeling and urbane distinction of style to those of Landor — are his 

 complimentary addresses and epistles in blank verse to his friends. 

 The lighter of these again dates from Bournemouth days ; the 

 graver and more deeply felt from the days of his exile. In like 

 manner it is the emotions of exile that give a deeper note to his 

 lyrics. The richer and more complicated lyrical measures he never 

 attempted ; the impassioned rush of exalted lyrical feeling and music 

 finds Tio place in his work. But in simpler modes he is sometimes a 

 lyrist that both " plucks at our heart and draws us by the ear " (to 

 borrow a phrase of Meredith). Remember the verses which he wrote 

 to the air of " Wandering Willie " in the Island of Tahiti, 

 " Home no more home to me, whither must I wander ?" 



Is the pathos of exile anywhere expressed more poignantly or more 

 hauntingly ? Not, in this case, of his own exile, which was voluntary 

 and full of consolations, but that of those exiles who depart hunger- 

 driven and leave their hearthstones cold behind them. Touching 

 his own personal exile, there is a note even of metrical genius in 

 the heart-searching lilt of those lines suggested by a phrase in the 

 letter of an acquaintance, Mr. S. R. Crockett. Writing to him about 

 his old haunts in the Pentland hills, the country of the Cameronian 

 persecutions, Mr. Crockett had said, " The whaups (Scotch for curlews) 

 are still crying above the tombs of the martyrs, your heart remembers 

 how." Stevenson took this up and wrote : — 



" Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying, 

 Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now, 

 Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying, 



My heart remembers how I 

 Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places, 

 Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor, 

 Hills of sheep, and the homes of the silent vanished races, 



And winds, austere and pure : 

 Be it granted me to behold you again in dying. 

 Hills of home I and to hear again the call ; 

 Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewits crying. 



And hear no more at aU," 



