I had never performed such a feat as this in my whole life before, for even in my hours of transcendent ambition I had recognized the essentially prosaic bent of my mind. I had always expected to be a great prose writer, and I had felt a rather indulgent condescension toward contemporary poets--especially those of my acquaintance. I used to think prose was the only vehicle of modern thought, and that all the great poets were dead. But when a man finds himself beginning to lisp in poetry at a belated age, his views on the significance of modern poetry are apt to undergo some important modification. I thought this couplet a very fair beginning; but no well rounded thought would come that had any relevance to the goblin, the moon or the love song. So I leave the couplet to stand by itself as a picture, suggestive of the fact that ambition may miss its mark, but a love song will surely live in some heart. My next attempt--for I was on fire with symbolic rhapsody--was a little more successful. I submit it without comment. The lesson is so obvious. I saw a bleeding head grinning, It grinned at me; I grinned at it, In fact, we both grinned irreverently. But the smiling sun shone on! I find the longer one delves in mystic poetry the deeper philosophical problems one can sound in a very few poignant flashes of symbolic description. Here is one of my happiest efforts: As my worn soul lay wriggling in the dust, I cried aloud to God in indignation That he had so mistreated me; But God only laughed, until He’d like to bust And pointed out that dirt was all creation. I turned off a number of other things, quite as profound and fantastical, and I find that in mystical poetry the Deity lends Himself to picturesque treatment a good deal more readily than any other person or subject of immediate and contemporary interest. So that in this way it leads the mind of the masses away from the frivolities of the hour to the larger considerations of life and destiny, and chastens folly with thoughts of the over-ruling immutable providence that is too often forgotten in the bustling cities of civilization. I send you only one more piece, to which I have given the dignity of a title. It is “The Dissatisfactions of Luxury,” and is in two stanzas: I heard a man mumbling in the horrid silence of the night. He was chaffering aloud with the good God; But God in the darkness vouchsafed no sign. And I asked him, scoffing, what he desired of the Omnipotent. “I am rich, I am Plutus,” answered he, angrily, “And I am bargaining for the moon.” “And why do you want it?” asked I in amaze. “Because I am tired of all my other toys.” “And the price?” asked I, scoffing, for I bore the badge of Lazarus. “Untold millions, heaped up to Heaven’s gate.” “Fool!” I cried in bitter derision; “Offer the good God your corrupt soul.”