A July ghost, aghast at the strange winter, Wonders, at burning noon, all summer-seeming, How, like a sad thought buried in light [woven] words, Winter, an alien presence, is ambushed here. See from the fire-fountained noon there creep Lazy yellow ardours towards pale evening, Dragging the sun across the shell of thought; A web threaded with fading fire; Futile and fragile lure, a July ghost Standing with feet of fire on banks of ice, My frozen heart, the summer cannot reach— Hidden as a root from air, or star from day, A frozen pool whereon mirth dances, Where the shining boys would fish. _To Edward Marsh_ (1914). “I believe that all poets who are personal see things genuinely—have their place. One needn’t be a Shakespeare and yet be quite as interesting. I have moods when Rossetti satisfies me more than Shakespeare, and I am sure I have enjoyed some things of Francis Thompson more than the best of Shakespeare. Yet I never meant to go as high as these. I know I’ve come across things by people of far inferior vision that were as important in their results to me. I am not going to refute your criticisms; in literature I have no judgment, at least for style. If in reading a thought has expressed itself to me in beautiful words, my ignorance of grammar, etc., makes me accept that, I should think you are right mostly, and I may yet work away your chief objections. You are quite right in the way you read my poems, but I thought I could use the ‘July Ghost’ to mean the summer, and also an ambassador of the summer, without interfering with the sense. The ‘shell of thought’ is man; you realize a shell has an opening, the ‘ardours’; the sense of heat forms a web; this signifies a sense of summer; the web again becomes another metaphor, a July Ghost. But, of course, I mean it for summer right through. I think your suggestion of taking out ‘woven’ is very good.” The next letter is from Cape Town. _To Edward Marsh_ (1914).