No--not for myself--feeling grateful as I do to have got into a state of mind to relish them properly. Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced--Even a Proverb is no proverb to you till your Life has illustrated it. I am ever afraid that your anxiety for me will lead you to fear for the violence of my temperament continually smothered down: for that reason I did not intend to have sent you the following sonnet--but look over the two last pages and ask yourselves whether I have not that in me which will bear the buffets of the world. It will be the best comment on my sonnet; it will show you that it was written with no Agony but that of ignorance; with no thirst of anything but Knowledge when pushed to the point though the first steps to it were through my human passions--they went away and I wrote with my Mind--and perhaps I must confess a little bit of my heart-- Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell: No God, no Deamon of severe response Deigns to reply from heaven or from Hell.-- Then to my human heart I turn at once-- Heart! thou and I are here sad and alone; Say, wherefore did I laugh? O mortal pain! O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan, To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain! Why did I laugh? I know this being's lease, My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads: Yet could I on this very midnight cease,[92] And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds; Verse, fame and Beauty are intense indeed But Death intenser--Death is Life's high meed. I went to bed and enjoyed an uninterrupted sleep. Sane I went to bed and sane I arose. [April 15.]