Poems, by Robert Louis Stevenson, hitherto unpublished/I saw red evening through the rain
I SAW RED EVENING THROUGH THE RAIN—1875
This Edinburgh poem of the year 1875 is another of an unhappy mood, when even the memory of delight has in it a bitter touch. The verses are an original draft, showing the writer groping after the finished form, and thus the second and fourth stanzas should be regarded as varying attempts to phrase the same emotion, rather than as separate finished stanzas of a completed poem.
In the final verse we have again, in the phrase, "the forward way," an indication of Stevenson's characteristic insistence upon the value, however difficult the circumstances of the moment, of continuing towards the goal.
I SAW RED EVENING THROUGH THE RAIN
I saw red evening through the rain
Lower above the steaming plain;
I heard the hour strike small and still,
From the black belfry on the hill.
Thought is driven out of doors tonight
By bitter memory of delight;
The sharp constraint of finger tips,
Or the shuddering touch of lips.
I heard the hour strike small and still,
From the black belfry on the hill.
Behind me I could still look down
On the outspread monstrous town.
The sharp constraint of finger tips,
Or the shuddering touch of lips,
And all old memories of delight
Crowd upon my soul tonight.
Behind me I could still look down
On the outspread feverish town;
But before me, still and grey,
And lonely was the forward way.