N the intervals of other work, Stevenson was writing
verse, some of it about the South Seas, some harking
back to memories of home. The collection published as
Songs of Travel were nearly all written in the last six years
of his life. These included "Give to me the fife I love,"
"I will make you brooches and toys for your delight,"
"Bright is the ring of words." The lines written to Fanny,
"Trusty, dusky, vivid, true," and the lines to S. R. Crockett,
in acknowledgment of a dedication, which expressed his
underlying sadness at being cut off from his own country,

Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where above the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how.

Stevenson's heart did indeed remember how. The Scotch
scenes in Catriona and Weir of Hermiston have the freshness of
something seen yesterday. He saw them as clearly and wrote
of them with as certain a touch as he saw and wrote of the
tropical scenes before his bodily eyes.

Among his other disabilities he was constantly threatened
with writer's cramp, a serious matter in those days before
typewriters had come into use, but in spite of this threat and
of all his other work, he was an indefatigable letter writer,
putting a lot of his energy--especially into the monthly
journal to Colvin. He had begun this simply with the
idea of keeping in touch, but as time went on it occurred

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