to W. E. Henley

Vailima Plantation, Upolu, Samoa, August 1st, 1892.

MY DEAR HENLEY,—It is impossible to let your new volume pass in silence.  I have not received the same thrill of poetry since G. M.’s Joy of Earth volume and Love in a Valley; and I do not know that even that was so intimate and deep.  Again and again, I take the book down, and read, and my blood is fired as it used to be in youth.  Andante con moto in the Voluntaries, and the thing about the trees at night (No. XXIV. I think) are up to date my favourites.  I did not guess you were so great a magician; these are new tunes, this is an undertone of the true Apollo; these are not verse, they are poetry—inventions, creations, in language.  I thank you for the joy you have given me, and remain your old friend and present huge admirer,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

The hand is really the hand of Esau, but under a course of threatened scrivener’s cramp.

For the next edition of the Book of Verses, pray accept an emendation.  Last three lines of Echoes No. XLIV. read—

‘But life in act?  How should the grave
Be victor over these,
Mother, a mother of men?’

The two vocatives scatter the effect of this inimitable close.  If you insist on the longer line, equip ‘grave’ with an epithet.

R. L. S.