[Jean L. Kreiling]

It was a great idea to post this one on the same day as the Masefield—both ostensibly about travel, both doing some “cataloging,” and of course, each allowing the reader to extrapolate for himself or herself, deciding just what kind of escape is being celebrated. But they are quite different poems. This one rambles more widely, and has more people in it—which must make it more appealing to some. I’m drawn more to the tight focus of the Masefield poem, but my preference also has a great deal to do with what I hear as better music in the Masefield poem.

Our appreciator shied away from offering a detailed critique, but his/her comment that the poem initiated an “ambition to travel” speaks volumes about the power of the poem. I especially like the word “ambition”—suggesting a striving for broader horizons that is as important as the actual acquisition of stamps on the passport.

I wasn’t sure under which thread to post this comment! Would love to see further reactions to the pairing of these two poems.

[Julie Steiner]

Stevenson's obsession with travel and activity is particularly poignant when one realizes how much of his life, from childhood through adulthood, he spent in bed, ill.

He wrote in an 1892 letter from Samoa--which he twice tried, and failed (due to poor health), to leave, before dying there in 1894--"I wish to die in my boots; no more Land of Counterpane for me. To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from a horse — ay, to be hanged, rather than pass again through that slow dissolution."

It so happens that The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is my family's current read-aloud. If it's any comfort, Maryann, the intro to our edition mentions how vigorously Stevenson championed the rights of native Hawaiians and Samoans against racist European and American politicians. In fact, the 1892 publication of his history of Samoa resulted in the recall of two particularly unsavory European officials, and for a time Stevenson feared that it might result in his own deportation, poor health or no.