I was pacing back and forth in the silent night. I had all the world about me, I cried out to it, I gripped it, to make it hear me. “Fools! oh fools!” I cried, “what is it that you _do_ believe in? Blind creatures that you are, this raging faith of mine--this fervent ardor--you do not believe in _that_! You do not believe in enthusiasm, you do not believe in ecstasy, you do not believe in genius! You think that I am mad, poor raving poet! You see me sick, haggard, dragging myself about. “But I am caged, I tell you,--I am caged! You are killing me as you would kill some animal; and I am never to sing that song--I am never to sing that song!” The thing was a madness to me. “No, no!” I rushed on, “I will! I will get free--I say I will! If I must, I will go out and beg on the streets, before I will let this thing die! Show me the vilest of you--I will get down upon my knees before him--I will kiss his feet and beg him to let me live! There is no degradation of my _self_ that I will not bear! I!--what am I? I am a worm--I am filth--I am vanity and impertinence and delusion. But _this_ thing--this is _God_! Oh you man with a carriage, will _you_ not give me a little? For a hundred or two of dollars I can live for a year! And you--why, see that ring on your finger! You would not think twice if you lost it; and yet think what I could do with that bauble! Oh, see how you abuse life--how you mock it, how you trample upon it--how you trample upon _God_! --“So I go about all day, haunted all the time, raging, lusting for my task. And you who believe in genius in the past, and do not believe in it in the present! Some of you had this faith when you were young; but I have it always--it is _I_! I was born for that, I will die for that! It is my love, my food, my health, my breath, my life! It comes to me wherever I am--carrying trays in a restaurant--pacing back and forth by the river--sitting here in my room and writing of it!” * * * * * So I thought, so I cried out; and each time as the thing surged in me, I sank down and moaned and sobbed. “No, it is all lost. I am helpless. I am beaten! I am walled in and tortured! I am a slave, I am a prisoner--I--” --And so the torrent of my thoughts sped on, and so I rushed with it--rushed to my fate. For suddenly I came to four words--four fearful words that roared in my soul like the thunder!-- “I AM A CAPTIVE!” It was like the falling of a bolt from the sky. It came with a sound that stunned me, with a flash that lit in one instant the whole horizon of my mind. “I am a captive! I am _The_ Captive! Fool that I am,--pent here in these prison-walls of tyranny, and beating out my brains against them! Panting--praying--cursing--pining to be free! And I am The Captive!”