A great poet, a great imaginative
writer, so glorifies and irradiates the scene in which his mighty
thoughts came to him, that we cannot help fancying that the secret
lies in crag and hill and lake, rather than in the mind that
gathered in the common joy. I have a passion for visiting the
haunts of genius, but rather because they teach me that inspiration
lies everywhere, if we can but perceive it, than because I hope to
detect where the particular charm lay. And so I am driven back upon
my own poor imagination. I say to myself, like Samson, "I will go
out as at other times before, and shake myself," and then the end
of the verse falls on me like a shadow--"and he wist not that the
Lord was departed from him."
January 18, 1889.
Nothing the matter, and yet everything the matter! I plough on
drearily enough, like a vessel forging slowly ahead against a
strong, ugly, muddy stream. I seem to gain nothing, neither hope,
patience, nor strength. My spirit revolted at first, but now I have
lost the heart even for that: I simply bear my burden and wait. One
tends to think, at such times, that no one has ever passed through
a similar experience before; and the isolation in which one moves
is the hardest part of it all.
Pages:
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124