Poems, by Robert Louis Stevenson, hitherto unpublished/Nay, but I fancy somehow, etc.
NAY, BUT I FANCY SOMEHOW, YEAR BY YEAR—1880
The theme of this poem establishes its approximate date, and though it may possibly have been written in the summer of 1880, more probably it belongs to the little cluster of poems for Fanny Osbourne that were offered to her by Stevenson prior to their marriage in May.
The continuation and growth of their love was for Stevenson a fixed conviction that he incorporated into many of the poems written for his wife. Here it takes form in lines that are preceded by phrases referring directly to the hardships of Stevenson's present and his immediate past. The "my land" is California, and the sea, that Pacific which was to encompass the closing years of Stevenson's life. The poem ends with two lines, notable in their connotation. In "Till all the plain be quickened with the moon," there is the suggestion of romantic love, and in the final line we have in "the lit windows," the thought of domestic life, of the happiness of home.
The sonnet form here adopted is one that Stevenson had used, though not very often, in
the days of his apprenticeship in verse some ten years earlier. During the Samoan period he now and then resorted to an irregular sonnet form; but this is as far as we know, the only exact sonnet of the intermediate period. Perhaps his acquaintance with French poetry led him to admit the two lines ending with the same sound—feet, defeat—a practice eschewed by the best English sonneteers.
NAY, BUT I FANCY SOMEHOW, YEAR BY YEAR
Nay, but I fancy somehow, year by year
The hard road waxing easier to my feet;
Nay, but I fancy as the seasons fleet
I shall grow ever dearer to my dear.
Hope is so strong that it has conquered fear;
Love follows, crowned and glad for fear's defeat.
Down the long future I behold us, sweet,
Pass, and grow ever dearer and more near;
Pass and go onward into that mild land
Where the blond harvests slumber all the noon,
And the pale sky bends downward to the sea;
Pass, and go forward, ever hand in hand,
Till all the plain be quickened with the moon,
And the lit windows beckon o'er the lea.