The writing of a book is like the bearing of a child. But every birth-pang
of the former lasts for hours; and it is months before the labor is done.

It is not merely the vision, the hour of exultation; that is but the
setting of the task. Now you will take that ecstasy, and hold on to it,
hold on with soul and body; you will keep yourself at that height, you
will hold that flaming glory before your eyes, and you will hammer it
into words. Yes, that is the terror--into words--into words that leap the
hilltops, that bring the ends of existence together in a lightning flash.
You will take them as they come, white-hot, in wild tumult, and you will
forge them, and force them. You will seize them in your naked hands and
wrestle with them, and bend them to your will--all that is the making of
a poem. And last and worst of all, you will hold them in your memory, the
long, long surge of them; the torrent of whirling thought--you will hold it
in your memory! You are dazed with excitement, exhausted with your toil,
trembling with pain; but you have built a tower out of cards, and you have
mounted to the clouds upon it, and there you are poised. And anything
that happens--anything!--Ah, God, why can the poet not escape from his
senses?--a sound, a touch--and it is gone!

These things drive you mad.--

But meanwhile it is not gone yet. You have still a whole scene in your
consciousness--as if you were a juggler, tossing a score of golden balls.
And all the time, while you work, you learn it--you learn it! It is
endless, but you learn it. In the midst of it, perhaps, you come down of
sheer exhaustion; and you lie there, panting, shuddering, your hands moist;
you dare not think, you wait. And then by and by you begin again--if
it will not come, you _make_ it come, you lash yourself like a dumb
beast--up, up, to the mountain-tops again. And then once more the thing