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! Pa.s.sionately, 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, G.o.d 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 longsh.o.r.eman 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, d.a.m.n 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.