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PROPERTY OF A LADY
STEVENSON, Robert Louis (1850-1954). Autograph manuscript, a poem entitled “To My Wife,” undated, comprising 28 lines of verse, with two emendations in a darker ink and a line in pencil, lined out by the poet. 1 page, 320 x 200 mm. Ink on wove paper, clean tear along right-hand margin.
Details
STEVENSON, Robert Louis (1850-1954). Autograph manuscript, a poem entitled “To My Wife,” undated, comprising 28 lines of verse, with two emendations in a darker ink and a line in pencil, lined out by the poet. 1 page, 320 x 200 mm. Ink on wove paper, clean tear along right-hand margin.
“To My Wife
Long must elapse ere you behold again
Green forest frame the entry of the lane—
The wild lane with the bramble and the brier,
The year-old cart-tracks perfect in the mire,
The wayside smoke, perchance, the dwarfish huts,
And ramblers’ donkey drinking from the ruts:—..."
Long ere you trace how deviously it leads,
Back from man’s chimneys and the bleating meads.
To the woodland shadow, to the silvan hush,
When but the brooklet chuckles in the brush—
Back from the sun and bustle of the vale
To where the great voice of the nightingale
Fills all the forest like a single room,
And all the banks smell of the golden broom;
So wander on until the eve descends,
And back returning to your firelit friends,
You see the rosy sun, despoiled of light,
Hung, caught in thickets, like a schoolboy’s kite.
Here from the sea the unfruitful sun shall rise,
Bathe the bare deck and blind the unshielded eyes;
The allotted hour aloft shall wheel in vain
And in the unpregnant ocean plunge again.
Assault of squalls that mock the watchful guard,
And pluck the husting canvas from the yard,
And senseless clamor of the calm, at night,
Must mar your slumbers. By the plunging light,
In heath-haunted, most unwomanly bower
Of the wild-swerving cabin, hour by hour...”
After revision, the poem was first published in Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896). A working manuscript is part of the Beinecke collection at Yale: A Stevenson Library, ed. G. McKay, vol. 5, no.7022. The 28-line shorter version was published in the Edinburgh edition, vol.14, pp. 307-308.
Provenance: Sold at auction at the Anderson Auction Co., printed protective folder, no date.
“To My Wife
Long must elapse ere you behold again
Green forest frame the entry of the lane—
The wild lane with the bramble and the brier,
The year-old cart-tracks perfect in the mire,
The wayside smoke, perchance, the dwarfish huts,
And ramblers’ donkey drinking from the ruts:—..."
Long ere you trace how deviously it leads,
Back from man’s chimneys and the bleating meads.
To the woodland shadow, to the silvan hush,
When but the brooklet chuckles in the brush—
Back from the sun and bustle of the vale
To where the great voice of the nightingale
Fills all the forest like a single room,
And all the banks smell of the golden broom;
So wander on until the eve descends,
And back returning to your firelit friends,
You see the rosy sun, despoiled of light,
Hung, caught in thickets, like a schoolboy’s kite.
Here from the sea the unfruitful sun shall rise,
Bathe the bare deck and blind the unshielded eyes;
The allotted hour aloft shall wheel in vain
And in the unpregnant ocean plunge again.
Assault of squalls that mock the watchful guard,
And pluck the husting canvas from the yard,
And senseless clamor of the calm, at night,
Must mar your slumbers. By the plunging light,
In heath-haunted, most unwomanly bower
Of the wild-swerving cabin, hour by hour...”
After revision, the poem was first published in Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896). A working manuscript is part of the Beinecke collection at Yale: A Stevenson Library, ed. G. McKay, vol. 5, no.7022. The 28-line shorter version was published in the Edinburgh edition, vol.14, pp. 307-308.
Provenance: Sold at auction at the Anderson Auction Co., printed protective folder, no date.
Sale room notice
Please note the tear is on the right margin not left as stated in catalogue.