comes back--you live the scene again, as an actor does, and you shape it
and you master it. And now in the midst of it, you find this highest of all
moments is gone! It is gone, and you can not find it! Those words that came
as a trumpet-clash, burning your very flesh--that melody that melted your
whole being to tears--they are gone--you can not find them! You search and
you search--but you can not find them. And so you stumble on, in despair
and agony; and still you dare not rest. You dare not ever rest in this
until the thing is done--done and over--until you have _nailed_ it
fast. So you go back again, though perhaps you are so tired that you are
fainting; but you fight yourself like a madman, you struggle until you feel
a thing at your heart like a wild beast; and you keep on, you hold it fast
and learn it, clinch it tight, and make it yours forever. I have done that
same thing five times to-day without a rest; and toiled for five hours in
that frenzy; and then lain down upon the ground, with my head on fire.

Afterward when you have recovered you sit down, and for two or three hours
you write; you have it whole in your memory now--you have but to put it
down. And this forlorn, wet, bedraggled thing--this miserable, stammering,
cringing thing--_this_ is your poem!

* * * * *

Some day the world will realize these things, and then they will present
their poor poets with diamonds and palaces, and other things that do not
help.

I wrote this, and then I leaned back, tired out. My thoughts turned to
Shakespeare, and while I was thinking of him--

But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,