Sometimes that is a glory, and sometimes again that is an agony. To have no duty outside of yourself; to have no inspiration outside of yourself; to have no routine to help you, no voice to cry out when your conscience goes to sleep, no place of refuge in your weakness!-- All that is but the reason why I dare not be weak. I have chosen to lead and not to follow; therefore I have no rest, and may not look behind me, and can think of nothing but the way. To be the maker of a religion is to sweat blood in the night-time. * * * * * There is but one way that I may live--to take every impulse that comes--to be watching, watching--to dare always and instantly, to hesitate, to put off never, to seize the skirt of my muse whenever it shimmers before me. So I make myself a habit, a routine, a discipline; and so each day I have new power. So each day I feel myself, I bare my arms, I walk erect, exulting--I laugh--I am a god! --And as I write that a feeling takes rise in me, and my heart beats faster; but I am tired, I sink back, I do not take the gift that is offered; and then my conscience gives a growl, and in a flash I see what I have done, and feel a throb of rage and leap up. * * * * * One of my perils is that when I am strong I feel that I must always be so. This truth that is so obvious, these words that flow so swift--what need is there to fear for them, to write them now?--And so they are never written. * * * * * May 27th. Will you imagine me to-day, kneeling by the bedside, shuddering; my face hidden, the tears streaming down my cheeks--and I crying aloud: “I will--oh, I will!” I can not tell any more. * * * * * May 29th. I am coming to the last scenes. I hear them rumbling in my soul--far, far off--like a distant surf on a windless night. I am coming, step by step: I mean to fight it out on this line. I know a man who always rose to the occasion. Never was he challenged that he did not dare and triumph. Oh, if instead of being hungry and pining, I had but the music of that divine inspirer!-- Heller schallend, mich umwallend, sind es Wellen sanfter Lüfte? Sind es Wogen wonniger Düfte? Wie sie schwellen, mich umrauschen, soll ich athmen, soll ich lauschen? Soll ich schlürfen, untertauchen, süss in Düften mich verhauchen? * * * * * May 30th. To-day. I had a spiritual experience--a revelation; to-day, in a flash of insight, I understood an age--whole centuries of time, whole nations of men. I had been writing one of the great hymns, one of the great victories; and I had been drunk with it, it had come with a surge and a sweep, it had set everything about me in motion--huge phantom shapes--all life and all being gone mad.