Chapter III: Part I: Writing a Poem (2)

What a dreadful thing it is to believe in a Bible, and not to believe in literature--to believe in a Bible and not to believe in a God!

You think that this world lives upon the revelation of two thousand years ago! Fool--this world lives as your body lives by the beating of its heart--upon the revelation and the effort of each instant of its life. And to-day or to-morrow the great Revealer might send to some lonely thinker in his garret a new word that would scatter to dust and ashes all laws and all duties that now are known to men.

* * * * *

There are many ways to look at the world, and always a deeper one. I see it as a fearful thing, towering, expanding, upheld by the toil and the agony of millions. Who will bring us the new hope, the new song of courage, that it go not down into the dust to-day?

To do that there is the poet; to live and to die unheeded, and to feed for ages upon ages the hungry souls of men--that is to be a poet. Therefore will he sing, and sing ever, and die in the sweetness of his song.

When I think of that--not now as I write it here in bare words--but in quivering reality, it is a hand upon my forehead, and a presence in the room.

* * * * *

May 6th.

Chiefest of all I think of my country! Passionately, more than words can utter, I love this land of mine. If I tear my heart till it bleeds and pour out the tears of my spirit, it is for this consecration and this hope--it is for this land of Washington and Lincoln. There never was any land like it--there may never be any like it again; and Freedom watches from her mountains, trembling.

--It is a song that it needs, a song and a singer; to point it to its high design, to thrill it with the music of its message, to shake the heart of every man in it, and make him burn and dare! For the first time there is Liberty; for the first time there is Truth, and no shams and no lies, enthroned. The news of it has gone forth like the sound of thunder, and has shaken all the earth: that man at last may live, may do what he can and will!

--And to what is it? Is it to the heaping up of ugly cities, the packing of pork and the gathering of gold? That is the thing that I toil for--to tear this land from the grasp of mean men and of merchants! To take the souls of my countrymen into the high mountains with me, to thrill them with a soaring, strong resolve! _Living things_ shall come from this land of mine, living things before I die, for the hunger of it burns me, and will not ever let me rest. Freedom! freedom! And stern justice and honor, and knowledge and power, and a noonday blaze of light!

Arise in thy majesty, confronting the ages!
Stretch out thine arms to the millions that shall be!
Justice thine inheritance, God thy stay and sustenance,
My country, to thee!

Those are feeble words. If this were a book, I would tear it all up.

I wonder if any one will ever read this. As a matter of fact, I suppose ten people will read gossip about the book for every one who reads the book.

* * * * *

This is just a month from the beginning. A month to-day! Yes--I have done my share, I have done a third of it--a third!

But the end is so much harder!

* * * * *

May 9th.

I have been for two days in the mire. I was disturbed, and then I was sluggish. Oh, the sluggishness of my nature!

If ever I am a great poet, I will have made myself that by the power of my will; that is a fact. I am by nature a great clod--I feel nothing, I care about nothing. I look at the flowers as a cow chewing its cud.--It is only that I _will_ to do right.

Sometimes the sight of my dulness drives me wild. Then again I merely gaze at it. I try time and again to get my mind on my work, and something--anything, provided it is trivial enough--turns me aside. Just now I saw a spider-web, and that made me think of Bruce, and thence I went by way of Walter Scott to Palestine, and when I came to I was writing a song for--who was the minstrel?--to sing outside of the prison of Coeur de Lion.

I go wandering that way--sometimes I sit so for an hour; and then suddenly I leap up with a cry. But I may try all I please--I don't care anything about the work--it doesn't stir me--the verses I think of make me sick. And then I remember that I have only so many weeks more; and what it will mean to fail; and that makes me desperate, but doesn't help.

When I have stopped at some resting-place in the poem, I can get going again. But now I have stopped in the middle of a climax; and the number of times that I have read that last line, trying to find another--Great heavens!

* * * * *

But I can not find another word. I am in despair.

I know perfectly well what I shall do, only I am a coward, and do not do it. I shall stay in this state till my rage has heaped itself up enough and breaks through everything at last. And then I shall begin to hammer myself! to swear at myself in a way that would make a longshoreman turn white. And I shall spend perhaps two or three hours--perhaps two or three days--doing that, until I am quite in a white heat; and then--I shall go to my work.

That is the price I pay for being distracted.

* * * * *

May 11th.

I said to myself the day before yesterday--with a kind of a dry sob--“I can't do it! I can't do it!”

Oh how tormented I am by noises--noises! What am I not tormented by? Some days ago I was writing in a frenzy--and the landlady came for her rent. And the horrible creature standing there, talking at me! “So lonely!--don't ever see people! Mrs. Smithers was a-saying--” Oh, damn Mrs. Smithers!

I thought I could never do it--I was really about to give it up. I went out on the street--I roamed about for hours, talking I don't know what nonsense to myself. And then at last I came home, and I knelt down there at the bedside and said: “Here you stay without anything to eat until you've written ten lines of that poem!”

And that was how I did it. I stayed there, and I prayed. I don't often pray, but that time I prayed like one possessed--I was so lonely and so helpless--and the work was so beautiful. I stayed there for nine blessed hours, and then the clock stopped and I couldn't count after that.

But the day came, and then the ten lines! And so I had my breakfast.

These things leave you weak, but a little less dull.

* * * * *

May 13th.

I have been working with a kind of wild desperation all day to-day. Oh it hurts--it hurts--but I am doing it! Whenever I read some lines of it that are real--whenever some great living phrase flashes over me--then I laugh like a man in the midst of a battle.

I shall be just as a man who has been through a battle; haggard and wild and desperate. Oh, I don't think I shall _ever_ have the courage to do it again!

I did not know what it meant! I did not! It was giving myself into the hands of a fiend!

All great books will be something different to me after this. Did Shakespeare write thus with the blood of his soul? Or am I weak? Did he ever cry out in pain, as I have?

* * * * *

May 14th.

Another day of raw torture. It is like toiling up a mountain side; and your limbs are of lead. It is like struggling in a nightmare,--that is just what it is like. It is sickening.

But then you dare not stop. It is hard to go on, but it is ten times as hard to start if you stop.

I could hardly stand up this afternoon! but the thing was ringing in my ears--it went on and on--I had to go after it! I was in the seventh heaven--I could see anything, dare anything, do anything. It made no difference how hard--it called to me--on--on! And I said: “Suppose I were to be tortured--could I go then?” And so I went and went.

I haven't written it down yet; I felt sick. But I know it all.

Oh men--oh my brothers--will you love me for this thing?

* * * * *

May 16th.

I did no writing yesterday or to-day. I have been terribly frightened.

I wrote what I had to write the day before yesterday--I could not help it. But when I stopped my head was literally on fire, and the strangest mad throbbing in it--I stood still in fear, it felt so as if something were going to burst--my head seemed to weigh a ton. I poured cold water over it, but it made no difference--it stayed that way all night and all yesterday.

What am I to do? I dare not think--I took a long walk, and even now I find myself thinking of the book without knowing it. Imagine me sitting on a doorstep and playing for two hours with a kitten!

Why should I be handicapped in such a way as this? I had never thought of such a thing.

* * * * *

I was thinking about The Captive--it is my own. Nobody has helped me--I have told not one person of it. Everything in it has come out of my soul.

* * * * *

May 17th.

I feel better to-day, but I hardly know what to do.

Meantime I was happy!--Think of a poet's being happy with city flowers! of a poet's being happy with store-flowers--prostitute-flowers--flowers for sale!

It was all about a narcissus--“Very flower of youth, and morning's golden hour!”--as I called it once. And it danced so! (It was out on the curbstone)--and I went off happy.

Then I thought of a poem that is pure distilled ecstasy to my spirit. I will write it, and be happy again:

Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright;
Spirit of a winter's night!-- ...
Sit thee there, and send abroad,
With a mind self-overaw'd,
Fancy, high-commission'd:--send her!
She has vassals to attend her;
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost;
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray;
All the heaped Autumn's wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth;
She will mix those pleasures up,
Like three fit wines in a cup,
And thou shall quaff it!--

Ah! And so I went along, “sun, moon, and stars forgot”--laughing and half dancing. People stared at me--and I laughed. And then I passed three pretty girls, and I laughed, and they laughed too. I guess they thought I was going to follow them.

--But that pleasure was not in my cup, dear girls.

* * * * *

Some of these days I hope to live in a beautiful world, where a man may speak to a pretty girl on the street. Badness is its own punishment, let the bad world observe.

I would rather look at a beautiful woman than do anything else I know of in this world, except listen to music.

* * * * *

May 18th.

I often think how I shall spend my money after The Captive is done. I shall take a band of chosen youths, seekers and worshipers, and we shall build a house on a mountain-top and worship the Lord in the beauty of music!

I shall have to begin at the beginning--I have never had any one to teach me music. But oh, if I did know!--And if I ever got hold of an orchestra--_how_ I would make it go!

And in the middle of it the astonished orchestra would see the conductor take wings unto himself and fly off through the roof.

A book that I mean to write some day will be called The Pleasures of Music, and it will sing the joys of being clean and strong, of cold water and the early morning and a free heart. It will show how all the unhappiness of men is that they live in the body and in self, and how the world is to be saved through music, which is not of the body, nor of self--which is free and infinite, swift as the winds, vast as the oceans, endless as time, and happy as whole meadows of flowers! The more who come to partake of it, the better it is; for generous is “Frau Musika,” her heart is made wholly of love.

--And when I have shown all these things, Frau Musika, I shall tell of the golden lands that I have visited upon the wings of thy spirit!--

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain!
What fields or waves or mountains,
What shapes of sky or plain!
What love of thine own kind, what ignorance of pain!

* * * * *

May 20th.

I live among the poor people and that keeps me humble. There is not much chance for freedom, I hear them say, there are not many who can dwell in the forests. Prove your right to it--prove what you can do--the law is stern. I am not afraid of the challenge; I will prove what I can do.

But I see one here and there with whom the law is not so strict, I think.

* * * * *

I met a merchant the other night. I dreamed of him. He said: “I buy such goods as men need; I buy them as cheaply as I can, since life is grim. I sell them as cheaply as I can, since men are poor and suffering. I make of profit what I need to live humbly. I am not of the world's seekers; I am of the finders.”

* * * * *

I met also a guileless fool.

We passed a great mansion. “I should like to know the man who lives there,” said the fool.

“Should you?” said I.

“Is he a hero?” asked the fool.

“No,” said I.

“Is he a poet?” asked the fool.

“No,” said I.

“Must he not be very beautiful,” said the fool, “that men judge him worthy of so much beauty?”

* * * * *

May 21st.

I must finish this thing this time! That cry rings in my ears night after night. I am toiling upward--upward--I can see no sign of the end yet--but I must finish this time! If I had to stop with this thing haunting me--if I had to go out into that jungle of a world with this weight upon me--to repress myself with this fire in my heart--I could not bear it--I could not bear it!

And if I stopped and went out into that world again--how many weeks of agony would it cost me to get back to where I am now!

I must finish this time!

* * * * *

May 22d.

“No, officer, I am neither a burglar nor a highwayman, nor anything else worth bothering; I'm just a poet, and I'm crazy, to all practical purposes, so please get used to me and let me wander about the streets at these strange hours of the night without worrying!”

Poor, perplexed policeman! Poor, perplexed world! Poor, perplexed mothers and fathers, sisters and cousins and aunts of poets!

Mit deinen schwarzbraunen Augen
Siehst du mich forschend an:
“Wer bist du, und was fehlt dir,
Du fremder, kranker Mann!”

Who does not love the poet Heine--melodious, beautiful, bitter soul? Is there any other poet who can mingle, in one sentence, savage irony and tenderness that brings tears into the eyes? Who can tell the secret of his flower-like verses?

Ich bin ein deutscher Dichter,
Bekannt im deutschen Land;
Nennt man die besten Namen
So wird auch der meine genannt.
Und was mir fehlt, du Kleine,
Fehlt manchem im deutschen Land;
Nennt man die schlimmsten Schmerzen,
So wird auch die meine genannt!

I have never seen but one beautiful thing in New York, and that is its mighty river in the night-time. I wander down to the docks when my work is done, and when it is still; I sit and gaze at it until the city is quite gone, and all its restlessness,--until there is but that grave presence, rolling restlessly, silently, as it has rolled for ages. It makes no comments; it has seen many things.

To-night I sat and watched it till a tangled forest sprang up about me, and I saw a strange, high-bowed, storm-beaten craft glide past me, ghostly white, its ghostly sailors gazing ahead and dreaming of spices and gold.

* * * * *

The old, old river--my only friend in a whole city! It goes its way--it is not of the hour.

It fascinates me, and I sit and sit and wonder. I gaze into its black and gurgling depths, and whisper what Shelley whispered: “If I should go down there, I should _know_!”

* * * * *

But no, I should not know anything.

* * * * *

_The days when thou wert not, did they trouble thee? The days when thou art not shall trouble thee as much._

* * * * *

May 24th.

AN ESSAY AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS

I write this to set forth a purpose which I have for over a year held before me. I write it that it may serve me for a standard. I write it at a time when my bank-account consists of twenty-five dollars, and I mean to publish it at such a time as by the method of plain living and high thinking, I shall have been able to increase it a hundredfold.

We are told that a man who would write a great poem must first make a poem of his life. An artist, as I understand the word, is a man who has but one joy and one purpose and one interest in life--the creating of beauty; he is a man lifted above and set apart from all other motives of men; a man who seeks not wealth nor comfort nor fame, nor values these things at all; a man whose heart is forever lonely, whose life is an endless sorrow, and whose excuse and whose spur and whose goal and whose consecration, is the creating of beauty.

What power--be it talent or genius--God has given me, I can not tell; I only know that an artist in that sense of the word I mean to be. I have thought out a plan by which I shall make the publishing of my books, as well as the writing of them, a thing of Art.

No one will read very far in what I shall write without perceiving there a savage hatred of the spirit of the modern world of wealth; it is only because I have faith in democracy and hope in the people of my country that I do not go to worship my God on a desert island. The world which I see about me at the present moment--the world of politics, of business, of society--seems to me a thing demoniac in its hideousness; a world gone mad with pride and selfish lust; a world of wild beasts writhing and grappling in a pit.

I am but a voice crying in the wilderness, and these things must run their course. But in the meantime there is one thing that I can do, and the doing of that has become with me a passion--I can keep my own life pure; I can see that there is one man amid all this madness whose life is untouched by any stain of it; who lives not by bread alone, nor by jewelry and gold; who lives not to be stared at and made drunk with pride, but to behold beauty and dwell in love; who labors day and night to keep a heart full of worship and to sing of faith to suffering men; who takes of the reward of that singing just what food and shelter his body needs; and who shrinks from wealth and luxury as he would from the mouth of hell.

To live humbly and in oblivion would be my choice, but it will be my duty to do differently. I know enough about the human heart to know that the presence of one righteous man makes ten thousand unrighteous men angry and uncomfortable. And therefore, for the help of any whom it may comfort, and for the damnation of all the rest, I shall choose that the life I live and the thing I do shall be public; I shall choose that the millions in our country who are wearing out their frantic lives in the pursuit of the dollar, and the few who are squandering their treasures in drunken pomp, shall know that there is one man who laughs at them--whom all the millions of all of them could not buy--and who dwells in joy and worship in a heaven of which they can not even know. In other words, it is my idea not merely to make a poem of my life, but to publish the poem.

I shall have other, and deeper, and kinder reasons also, for what I shall do. What I write in my books must be from my deepest heart, the confession of those moments of which I would speak to no living soul; it must be all my tenderness, and all my rapture, and all my prayer; and do you think it will come easily to me to put that out before the rough world to be stared at, to be bound up in a book and hawked about by commercial people?...

(Here follows in the manuscript the outline of a
plan for publishing the writer's works at cost.)

* * * * *

Would it not be interesting to me, if I could but pierce the future once, and see how long it is destined to be before I do so publish a book! I would do my work better, I fancy, for that.--But let it lie. I shall publish it some day surely, that I know at least.

* * * * *

Sometimes I can hardly realize what it will be to me when I have really won fame, when I can speak the things that so need speaking--and be heard.

* * * * *

May 25th.

Line by line, page by page, I do it. I am counting the days now, wondering--longing.

It is not merely the writing of it, it is the seeing of it--the planning and designing. Sometimes I brood over it for hours--I can not find what I want; and then suddenly a phrase flashes over me and like a train of gunpowder my thought goes running on--leaping, flying; and then the whole thing is plain as day. And I hold it all living in my hands.

I am blessed with a good memory. In times of excitement such as that I seize all the best phrases and carry them away, and bury them out of sight, like a miser. They are my nuggets of gold.

And sometimes I am a greedy miser, and stand perplexed; shall I go on and gather more, or shall I make off with the armful that I have?

* * * * *

May 26th.

My religion is my Art. I have no prayer but my work.

Sometimes that is a glory, and sometimes again that is an agony. To have no duty outside of yourself; to have no inspiration outside of yourself; to have no routine to help you, no voice to cry out when your conscience goes to sleep, no place of refuge in your weakness!--

All that is but the reason why I dare not be weak. I have chosen to lead and not to follow; therefore I have no rest, and may not look behind me, and can think of nothing but the way.

To be the maker of a religion is to sweat blood in the night-time.

* * * * *

There is but one way that I may live--to take every impulse that comes--to be watching, watching--to dare always and instantly, to hesitate, to put off never, to seize the skirt of my muse whenever it shimmers before me. So I make myself a habit, a routine, a discipline; and so each day I have new power. So each day I feel myself, I bare my arms, I walk erect, exulting--I laugh--I am a god!

--And as I write that a feeling takes rise in me, and my heart beats faster; but I am tired, I sink back, I do not take the gift that is offered; and then my conscience gives a growl, and in a flash I see what I have done, and feel a throb of rage and leap up.

* * * * *

One of my perils is that when I am strong I feel that I must always be so. This truth that is so obvious, these words that flow so swift--what need is there to fear for them, to write them now?--And so they are never written.

* * * * *

May 27th.

Will you imagine me to-day, kneeling by the bedside, shuddering; my face hidden, the tears streaming down my cheeks--and I crying aloud: “I will--oh, I will!”

I can not tell any more.

* * * * *

May 29th.

I am coming to the last scenes. I hear them rumbling in my soul--far, far off--like a distant surf on a windless night.

I am coming, step by step: I mean to fight it out on this line.

I know a man who always rose to the occasion. Never was he challenged that he did not dare and triumph. Oh, if instead of being hungry and pining, I had but the music of that divine inspirer!--

Heller schallend,
mich umwallend,
sind es Wellen
sanfter Lüfte?
Sind es Wogen
wonniger Düfte?
Wie sie schwellen,
mich umrauschen,
soll ich athmen,
soll ich lauschen?
Soll ich schlürfen,
untertauchen,
süss in Düften
mich verhauchen?

* * * * *

May 30th.

To-day. I had a spiritual experience--a revelation; to-day, in a flash of insight, I understood an age--whole centuries of time, whole nations of men.

I had been writing one of the great hymns, one of the great victories; and I had been drunk with it, it had come with a surge and a sweep, it had set everything about me in motion--huge phantom shapes--all life and all being gone mad.

And then, when I had written it, I went out into the dark night; I walked and walked, not knowing where, still tingling with excitement. And, suddenly, I stood spellbound--the cathedral!

There it was--there it was! I saw it, alive and real before me--all of it--all that I had seen and known! I cried out for joy, I stretched out my arms to it--the great, dark surging presence; and all my soul went with it, singing, singing--up into the misty night!

* * * * *

June 1st.

I sat to-night by the river again. It was moonlight, and the water lay shimmering. A little yacht, gleaming with lights, sped by; it was very close, and I saw a group of people on it, I heard them laughing; and one of them--a woman--was singing.

O God, what a voice! So rich, so exquisite! It soared upward and died again, quivering like the reflection of the stars on the water. It went in--in to the very depths of my soul; it loosed all the woe of my spirit, it made the tears gush into my eyes. And then it died away, away in the distance; and I sat with my hands clasped.

Sail on--sail on--oh heavenly voice! Far-off vision of brightness and beauty! Your lot is not my lot.

* * * * *

--There is something within me that weeps yet, at the echo of that music. Oh, what would I not give for music! How much of my bitterness, how many of my sorrows have melted into tears at one strain!

And I can not have it! Oh, you who do have it, do you know what you have? Oh beautiful voice, do you hear yourself?

All things else I can make for myself--friendship and love--nature and books and prayer; all things but music!

* * * * *

Can you not hear that voice dying--dying--“over the rolling waters”?

* * * * *

June 2d.

I shall come out of this a man--a man! I shall know how to live all my days! I shall have memories that will always haunt me, memories that I can build the years by!

* * * * *

June 3d.

From the time that I began The Captive it has been almost two months; it is just six weeks from the day I wrote that I had ten or twelve weeks in which to finish. I have done well financially--I have twenty-one dollars left, and I have paid for my typewriting.

It is not a fortune. But enough is as good as a fortune.

And I am coming on! I have been counting the scenes--I am really within sight of the end.

--That day when I crouched by the bed I saw all of the end. I have seen the whole thing. It will leave me a wreck, but I can do it. And it will take me about three weeks.

Think of my being able to say that!--Five or six hundred lines at least I shall have to do, and still I dare to say that. But I am full of this thing, I mount with it all the time. I am finding my wings.

Nothing can stop me now; I feel that I shall hold myself to it. I become more grim every day.

* * * * *

No one can guess what it means to me to find that I have hold of the whole of this thing! It is like strong wine to me--I scarcely know where I am.

* * * * *

June 4th.

I am sitting down by the window, and first I kick my heels against my old trunk, and then I write this. Hi! Hi! I think of a poem that I used to recite about Santa Claus--“Ho, Castor! ho, Pollux!”--and then ho a lot of other things--a Donner and a Blitzen I remember in particular. I want a reindeer--a Pegasus--a Valkyrie--an anything--to carry me away up into the air where I can exult without impropriety!

Come blow your horn, hunter,
Come blow your horn on high!
In yonder room there lieth a 'cello player,
And now he's going to move away!
Come blow your horn--

That's an old Elizabethan song. I heard them come up for his trunk just now, and they've dragged it down-stairs, and I hear the landlady fuming because they are tearing the wall paper. I have never loved the sound of the landlady's voice before.

* * * * *

--The world is divinely arranged, there is no question about it.

* * * * *

June 5th.

Deep in my soul I was convinced that the room would be let to something worse. But now it appears that the landlady's sister is to occupy it.

--So now I will get to work!

--Moving is noisy; I can't complain. I have been walking about the streets. I am hungry for the work; but still, I had much to think of. It is a wonderful thing--a glorious thing, this story--it will make men's hearts leap.

* * * * *

June 6th.

I have plenty of time to write journals, if I feel like it. There is the sister, and there is the landlady, and there is another woman, and they have been jabbering about dresses all of the morning. I have been like a crazy man--I was all on fire this morning, too! O God, it is too cruel!

I could dress those three hags with broomsticks.

* * * * *

--How long is this to continue, I want to know. Here it is afternoon and they are still chattering. Every time I have tried to compose my thoughts they have come back and begun chattering again. And so I can only pace about, and then rush out into the street--and wear myself sick. I call this simply monstrous. That my soul should be tied down to such vulgarity as this--is it not maddening? Here I am--with all my load of woe--at this fearful crisis! And I am to be shattered and wrecked and ruined by _this_! Just as long as they choose to sit there, just so long I am helpless. Was it for this that I have borne all the pain?

* * * * *

It seems to me that I hear jeering laughter around me from a swarm of little demons. I hide my face and flee, but they follow me.

* * * * *

But what can you expect? Have they not a right to talk?--Yes--all the world has a right to be as hideous as it can. And I have no right but to suffer and to choke in my rage.

Three vile, ignorant serving-women! Serving-women--ah yes, and if they were _my_ servants! If I could pay them!--But who serves me! Of what consequence am I!

* * * * *

These things goad me, they are like poisoned thorns in my flesh. The infinite degradation of it all, the shame, the outrage!

It has burned a brand deep into my flesh, and never while I live will it come out. Ah, you rich men! You who rule us, who own the treasures, the opportunities, the joys! You who trample the fair gardens of life like great blind beasts!

Do you think it is nothing to me that the inspiration and the glory of my whole lifetime is to be trampled into nothingness for lack of what others spend upon one dress? Yes, of my whole lifetime! My whole lifetime! Give me but what another will spend upon one foolish gimcrack that he never looks at again, and I will live for a whole lifetime! And I will write such music--Bah! What am I doing?

* * * * *

--Sometimes when I think of these things a black shadow stalks over my heart. I hear a voice, “Fool, and do you still think that you are ever to escape from this? Do you not perceive that this sordid shame is your _lot_? Do you not perceive that you may writhe and twist, struggle and pant, toil and serve, till you foam at the lips? Who will heed you! Who will hear you! Who cares anything about you!--Who wants your Art! Who wants your work! Who wants your _life_!--Fool!”

* * * * *

--Of course this thing could not go on. And so of course,--stammering and writhing, as I always do when I have my nose pushed into this kind of filth--I had to speak to the landlady about it to-night.--

And of course the landlady was astonished. “Why, Mr. Stirling, can't a body talk in a body's own room?” Yes, a body can talk, but then other bodies have to move away.

Now she's going to speak to her sister about it. And here I sit, writhing and trembling. Oh my God, suppose I have to move! Oh merciful Father, have pity on me--I can't bear much of this! To go tramping around this hot and horrible city, to go into some new and perhaps yet more dirty place! And oh, the agony, the shame--suppose _that_ will not do, and I have to keep on searching! Dragging this fearful burden with me! And I have only eighteen dollars left!

* * * * *

If I think of it any longer I shall scream with nervousness.

* * * * *

June 7th.

And now it is all settled. A body has to talk in a body's own room, and a body's nose has to turn up with indignation as a body announces the fact. And so here I sit, waiting for the expressman to come for my trunk.

Now that it is over it does not seem so bad. I am like a snail--once back in my shell, I do not care what happens. I have given up trying to write The Captive, and so nothing bothers me any more.--I have forgotten all about it now, it is years behind me.

But I have seen it all; I can get it back in good time. I do not fear.

I have rolled up a little bundle, a tooth-brush and some manuscripts principally; and I send the rest to a friend's house. I have had an inspiration. Why should I stay in this hot and steaming place?--Why should I be “barricaded evermore within the walls of cities?” _Ich will ins Land!_

Why did I not think of this in the beginning? I am going now to see the springtime!--“the only pretty ring time, when birds do sing--hey ding-a-ding!”

That was a real idea. I do not know where I am going; but I will walk and get somewhere--there will be woods. I'll sleep in hay-ricks if it can't be managed any other way.

Away, away from men and towns,
To the wildwood and the downs!

I could have been through in three weeks now, I believe. But it was not to be. We have to take what comes to us--

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate.

I'm glad I don't have to write poetry like _that_!

* * * * *

June 8th.

Howdy-do, Brother Bobolink! How in the world did you guess I was coming this way?

--Es ist nun einmal so.
Kein Dichter reist incognito!

Ah, to be out in the open air again, to see the world green and beautiful; to run with the wind and look at the flowers and listen to the birds! I am sitting by a spring; I have eaten my dinner.

I turned my steps Jerseyward.

* * * * *

--I have been walking all day. I must find some place to stop very soon. I can not think of the country with this burden on me. I am like a sick animal--I seek a hiding-place. I fancied I might think of my work on the way, but I can not. The world is happy; my work is not happy.

My hope is all in the end of the journey, and the walking is drudgery. And then, my money is going! I must find some sort of a hut--a tumble-down house, an old barn--anything.

I shall trudge one more day's journey. Then I think I shall be far enough from New York.

* * * * *

--I passed a tramp to-day; and while we walked together I composed an address:

“My brother--for are we not brothers, thou and I?

“Have we not fled from the sleek man, thou and I? And is it not we alone that know Truth?

“Thy clothing is ragged, and there is hunger in thine eyes; it is so also with me.

“It is thy fate to wander; it is my fate to wander too. And with restless eyes to look out upon the world, to meet with distrust from men.

“Yet not for that am I sad, nay, not for that, but for a deeper sorrow; because I was sent out into the world with a curse upon me, because I was sent out into the world a Drunkard.

“Yea, so it is, my brother.

“And that for which I thirst is not easy to find; and when I have found it I am not content, but must seek more; and so I have only desolation.

“Who laid this curse upon us, my brother?

“That we should dwell in sorrow and unrest?

“That no man should heed our voice, and that we should grow weak and faint?

“That we should die, and be forgotten--thou and I?

“Oh, tell us wherefore--ye wise men.”

* * * * *

June 9th.

I have walked another day. I am beginning to get away from the suburban towns, and into the real country. I knew that it would cost me a good deal to go to a hotel last night, and it was warm, so I slept in a hay-stack! It was quite an adventure. Now I've got my pockets stuffed full of rolls, Benjamin Franklin style.

--My mind is like the ocean after a storm.

The great waves come rolling over it still; it is all restless, tossing. But it is sinking, sinking to rest!--Heaven grant that I may find my place of refuge before it is quite calm.

It is everything or nothing with me; I am made that way. Either I give every instant of my time, every thought, every effort to my work, or else I close up like a flower and wait. I can not write poetry and hunt a lodging too.

So I am waiting--waiting.--

* * * * *

June 10th.

I began inquiring to-day--a shanty, a barn--anything. Every one thinks it necessary to be very much puzzled about what I want it for. My clothes are still fairly respectable, and so they tell me about pretty summer cottages--only so much per month!

* * * * *

June 12th.

I have been tramping on and on for two more days. I do not believe I shall ever find what I want. Nothing but one old musty place in ruins, so far! And my money is going, and I am wild with anxiety! I am almost tempted to turn back to the ruin.

* * * * *

June 13th.

I am sitting in a room in a dirty hotel. It was raining to-day and I had to come here. I shall probably have to pay fifty cents too. I won't stay to breakfast.

Oh what will I do if my money gives out? I saw a cottage to-day, that a man said I could have for ten dollars a month. I was tempted to spend nearly all I had and take it, and live on bread and water. I am desperate.

* * * * *

June 14th.

“Perhaps maybe you'd like 'Oaklands,'” said the farmer, laughing.

“Oaklands” turned out to be the home of a millionaire “dry-goods man” who was in Europe. I did not want “Oaklands.”

“I don't know of anything else,” said the farmer, scratching his head. Then he added with a grin, “unless it be the cook-house.”

“What's the cook-house?” I asked, suspiciously.

“Oh, it's a kind of a little place they've got 'way out in the woods,” said the farmer. “It's where they goes when they goes picnicking.”

My heart gave a jump. “What sort of a place?” I asked.

“They've got a big platform chiefly, where they put up a tent. The cook-house ain't nothin' but a little two by four shanty, with a big stove in it.”

“How big is it?” I cried.

“It's about half o' this here room, I reckon.”

(“This here room” was about six of my rooms in New York!)

“And where is it?” I cried. “How can I get there?”

“Oh, you don't want to go to no sech place ez that!” said the farmer. “There ain't no bed nor nothin' in it! An' it's two mile out there in the woods!”

Let anybody imagine how my heart was going! “Who can show it to me?” I panted.

“Why,” said he, “I'm the man that's in charge of it; but I--”

“And can you rent it to me for a month?”

“Why, I don't know any reason why I can't rent it to you for a year--only it ain't worth nothin', an'--”

“Then rent it to me! The less it is worth the better it will suit me. But come, show me where it is!”

“I reckon I can show you,” said the man, looking perplexed. “But what in the world do you want to go into that lonesome place for? Why, boy, nobody goes there in a month! An' what you goin' to do for somethin' to eat, an' some place to sleep, an'--”

* * * * *

I managed to get him started at last. And now, oh just look at me! I've been roaming around staring at it--inside and outside. The gods love me after all.

The infinite relief that it is! The infinite exultation that it is! And all to myself--not a soul near me! And out in the woods! _And mine for a month!_ Oh blessed 'cello player that moved away; blessed landlady's sister that talked--!

And oh blessed cook-house! We will make thee a consecrated cook-house before we get through--we will! We will cook a dish in thee that will warm the hearts of a goodly company--oh blessed cook-house!

--And outside a great white moon streaming through the forest trees!

* * * * *

The “cook-house” is about ten feet square. It is about one-third stove, now covered with a newspaper and serving as a table. Besides that there is one chair, for which I have just improvised a leg, with the help of my knife.

Besides the knife I have a fork, a plate, a cup, and a spoon--borrowed from the farmer. I have a blanket and a bed consisting of an old carriage robe, rented from the farmer. I have a lamp and a kerosene-can--ditto. I have a frying-pan--ditto. But I haven't my little oil-stove, so I fear I shall eat mostly cold things. I have a pail of milk, a loaf of bread, a ginger-cake, some butter, some eggs, some bacon, some apples and some radishes; also a tooth-brush, a comb, a change of clothing, two handkerchiefs, some pencils and paper, Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound, Samson Agonistes, faith, hope, and charity!

--I believe I have named all the necessaries of life.

* * * * *

June 15th.

I have scooped myself out a bathtub below the spring. I forgot towels in my list of necessaries! I fear it will be inconvenient on rainy days. I am like a child with a new toy, in my wonderful home. I was too excited to think of working. I fried an egg over a little fire, and then I roamed all about the woods. I don't remember ever having been so happy before. I had forgotten there was anything beautiful in the world.--

* * * * *

--I spent the whole of the afternoon dreaming a dream. When I have finished The Captive and gotten some money, I am going to have a little house in the woods! I have just had it before my eyes--and I laughed with delight like a boy.

It will be a fine big house--it will cost about fifty dollars; and there will be a table and a chair, and a cot, and such things. It will stand by a lake, a wild lake far out in the mountains! I have vowed to find a lake at least five miles from anything; and once a week I will have somebody bring me provisions.

* * * * *

--That is the way I shall spend next summer!--Up, up! Get to work!--

* * * * *

June 17th.

I have done nothing for two days but wander around and stare at things. It is all gone, every gleam of it! And I can not bring it back--I know not what to do, where to turn. I stopped in one of the hardest parts of the whole thing--in the very midst of it; and how in the world am I to begin? I walk around, I sit down, I get up again; I try to put my thoughts upon it, I bring them back again and again. But I can not do it--I have let every thread of it go. What has tramping over the country and delight in houses got to do with my work?

I have nothing to write--the whole thing is a blank to me. And here I am, eating up my provisions!--This shows me what I am--what a child.

--But how am I to get up on those fearful heights again? How am I to take the first step toward those fearful heights again? I cry that all day!

* * * * *

June 20th.

Oh, the joy of being out in the woods! I never knew of it before--I never dreamed it!

It is better than an orchestra. To be able to stretch your arms! To have a place to walk! To be able to talk aloud!--to laugh--to shout--to do what you please!--to be free from all men, and the thought of all men!

And to hear your own poetry aloud!--I cried out to-day that I would go back and do the whole of The Captive over again, so that I could hear it out loud. It made me quite wild yesterday when I first realized that I was _alone_!

--Last night there was a gale, and the clouds sped over the moon, and the wind roared in the trees--and I roared too!

--“For I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set!”

* * * * *

June 21st.

I did just as I have always done before. I got desperate enough, and then I went to work. I said “I will! and I will! and I will!” I think I said nothing else for twenty-four hours.

And so the storm again, and the great waves speeding!

* * * * *

Is there any one who has ever watched the great waves?--How they go! They take you right with them. My verses shall be waves.

I am tired out again; but oh, I am filled with my music! There was never any poetry like it in the world!

* * * * *

And at the height of it I cry out: “I am free! I am free!

“I won't have to stop again!

“I can go to the very end of it!

“And I don't care who hears me!

“I am free!”

* * * * *

June 23d.

I ate a raw egg this morning. For yesterday I let the fire go out five times, and gave up my breakfast rather than start a sixth.

I wanted to save time--I thought it would be egg just the same; but I record it for future generations of poets, that the experiment is not a success. You taste raw egg all day.

I shall have them all hard-boiled in the farmhouse after this.

--Twenty-eight lines to-day! I had more, but I lost them, and then I fell down.

--There is always a new height, but there are not always new words. My verse grows more and more incoherent, and more and more daring. I can feel the difference of a whole lifetime between it now, and what I wrote ten weeks ago.

* * * * *

--That is as it should be, of course. One does not reckon by days in a dungeon.

I notice also that the periods get longer; it has more sweep--it leaps wider spaces--it is less easy to follow.

* * * * *

--Oh, let not any man read what I wrote this morning, except he stand upon the heights!

* * * * *

I have worn a path in the woods, deep and wide, pacing back and forth, back and forth, all day. Any one who saw me would think that I was mad. Fighting--fighting--all the time fighting! Sometimes I run--sometimes I don't know what I do. Last night I know that it grew dark, and that I was still lying flat on the dead leaves, striking my hands, that were numb with excitement. I was too weak to move--but I remember panting out, “There is nothing like that in _King Lear_!”

* * * * *

I brought about twenty phrases out of that, and one or two sentences. They will fall into the verse the next time it comes.

* * * * *

June 24th.

--Listen to me, oh thou world--I will tell you something! You may take a century to understand those phrases--to stop laughing at them, perhaps--who knows? But those sentences are _real_; and they will last as long as there is a man alive to read them!

When I let anything make me cease to believe in that scene, may I die!

--I will shout it aloud on the streets; they are _real_!

* * * * *