Perhaps you are weary of my pleading, you think that I perish of my own weakness. But come and tell me, if you can, what it is that I have not done? What expedient is there that I have not tried, what resource, what hope? Have I not been true enough, have I not worked enough? Have I been extravagant, have I been dissipated? Did I not make my work my best? Come and reason with me--I shall be dead when you read this, but let us talk it over calmly. Put yourself here in my place and tell me what you would do. Have I not tried the publishers, the critics, the editors, the poets, the clergymen, the professors? Have I not waited--until I am sick, crazy? Have I not borne indignities enough? Have I not gotten myself kicked enough for my efforts? * * * * * --But you say: “I know nothing about The Captive!” Yes--so it is--then let us go back to Shelley. A fair test would be Queen Mab or The Revolt of Islam--he was my age then; but I will go ten years later and take Prometheus Bound. Would he have found any one to publish it? _Did_ he find any one to _read_ it? Why, ten or twenty years after Shelley died, Browning (then a boy) records that he searched all England for a copy of that queer poet's works! Why, Shelley's poetry was a byword and a mockery; and Shelley himself--first of all he was insane, of course, and afterward he was exile, atheist, adulterer, and scoundrel. They took his children away from him, because he was not fit to take care of them! * * * * * And he would not have been welcomed with open arms, I think! And he wouldn't have been set free--consecrated soul that he was. And sensitive, nervous, fragile, hysterical boy--do you think he would ever have written his poems, that he would ever have uttered his message? I have to make somebody understand this thing, somehow. I suggest that you think what that would have meant to you--to you who love poetry. Think that you would never have read: Oh wild west wind, thou breath of Autumn's being!... Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud, I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed! Think that you would never have read: Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know! That you would never have read: On a poet's lips I slept! I repeat that I have to make somebody understand this thing. I try that plan a little more. Listen to me now--think what it would have meant if that wise friend had not died when he did; think that you would never have read: And then my heart with rapture fills, And dances with the daffodils! Think that you would never have read: The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration and the poet's dream! Think that you would never have read: Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in world not realized; High instincts before which our moral nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised! That you would never have read: