Evidence: | 'The authorship of these beautiful verses has been most truculently fought about; but whoever wrote them (and it seems as if this Logan had) they are lovely.
What time the pea puts on the bloom
Though fliest the vocal vale,
An annual guest, in other lands
Another spring to hail.
Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
The sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year.
O could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make on joyful wing
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the spring.' |
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Century: | 1850-1899 | ||||||||||
Date: | 4 Oct 1873 | ||||||||||
Country: | Scotland | ||||||||||
Time: | evening: 8 pm | ||||||||||
Place: | specific address: 17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh | ||||||||||
Type of Experience (Reader): |
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Type of Experience (Listener): |
|
Reader: | Robert Louis Stevenson |
Age | Adult (18-100+) |
Gender | Male |
Date of Birth | 13 Nov 1850 |
Socio-economic group: | Professional / academic / merchant / farmer |
Occupation: | writer |
Religion: | atheist |
Country of origin: | Scotland |
Country of experience: | Scotland |
Listeners present if any: (e.g. family, servants,
friends, workmates) |
n/a |
Additional comments: | n/a |
Author: | Michael Bruce |
Title: | Ode to the Cuckoo |
Genre: | Poetry |
Form of Text: | Print: Book |
Publication details: | n/a |
Provenance: | unknown |
Record ID: | 17760 | |
Source - | ||
Author: | Robert Louis Stevenson | |
Editor: | Bradford Booth | |
Title: | The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson | |
Place of Publication: | New Haven and London | |
Date of Publication: | 1994 | |
Vol: | 1 | |
Page: | 330 | |
Additional comments: | additional editor Ernest Mehew. Letter to Frances Sitwell. |
Citation: | Robert Louis Stevenson, Bradford Booth (ed.), The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson (New Haven and London, 1994), 1, p. 330, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=17760, accessed: 02 December 2023 |
RLS believes the poem to have been written by John Logan (as does Arthur Quiller-Couch in The Oxford Book of English Verse and www.wikisource.org), but the footnote p 330 Booth/Mehew and also the Wikipedia entry on Michael Bruce attributes it to Bruce and that Logan appropriated it as his own. Hence RLS's comments about the authorship. For this RED entry I have attributed it to Bruce. |
Reading Experience Database version 2.0. Page updated: 27th Apr 2016 3:15pm (GMT)