--And to what is it? Is it to the heaping up of ugly cities, the packing of pork and the gathering of gold? That is the thing that I toil for--to tear this land from the grasp of mean men and of merchants! To take the souls of my countrymen into the high mountains with me, to thrill them with a soaring, strong resolve! _Living things_ shall come from this land of mine, living things before I die, for the hunger of it burns me, and will not ever let me rest. Freedom! freedom! And stern justice and honor, and knowledge and power, and a noonday blaze of light! Arise in thy majesty, confronting the ages! Stretch out thine arms to the millions that shall be! Justice thine inheritance, God thy stay and sustenance, My country, to thee! Those are feeble words. If this were a book, I would tear it all up. I wonder if any one will ever read this. As a matter of fact, I suppose ten people will read gossip about the book for every one who reads the book. * * * * * This is just a month from the beginning. A month to-day! Yes--I have done my share, I have done a third of it--a third! But the end is so much harder! * * * * * May 9th. I have been for two days in the mire. I was disturbed, and then I was sluggish. Oh, the sluggishness of my nature! If ever I am a great poet, I will have made myself that by the power of my will; that is a fact. I am by nature a great clod--I feel nothing, I care about nothing. I look at the flowers as a cow chewing its cud.--It is only that I _will_ to do right. Sometimes the sight of my dulness drives me wild. Then again I merely gaze at it. I try time and again to get my mind on my work, and something--anything, provided it is trivial enough--turns me aside. Just now I saw a spider-web, and that made me think of Bruce, and thence I went by way of Walter Scott to Palestine, and when I came to I was writing a song for--who was the minstrel?--to sing outside of the prison of Coeur de Lion. I go wandering that way--sometimes I sit so for an hour; and then suddenly I leap up with a cry. But I may try all I please--I don't care anything about the work--it doesn't stir me--the verses I think of make me sick. And then I remember that I have only so many weeks more; and what it will mean to fail; and that makes me desperate, but doesn't help. When I have stopped at some resting-place in the poem, I can get going again. But now I have stopped in the middle of a climax; and the number of times that I have read that last line, trying to find another--Great heavens! * * * * * But I can not find another word. I am in despair.