Chapter I: HAD an idea I was finding my poet at Springfield--well, I know

I shall not find him now till we get to the wilderness. He is yet incarcerated in the home town. He reflects in his soul the grey walls and squat architecture of the city; his nerves are still tied to the leading strings of audiences and friends; his soul, like a rare singing bird lately caught by the curious, flings itself against the bars and pines for the wilderness. All is going to go well with him and us, I surmise, and his eyes will have mountains and stars in them, and his nerves get free of strings and sink into their natural beds for a rest, and his soul, that rarely plumaged, wingéd wanderer ’twixt heaven and earth--well, some one has come to open the cage door and let him fly away, to heart’s desire.

The world will have to send a fowler after him with a net, if it wants to get him back. And to find him--it will be “a long ways.”

_The poet was in Fifth Street
Mewed up as in a prison.
He was moping in his bedchamber
All the day long
Far from the mountains and the flowers,
But see, a visitor has arrived
From strange parts._