I did just as I have always done before. I got desperate enough, and then I went to work. I said “I will! and I will! and I will!” I think I said nothing else for twenty-four hours. And so the storm again, and the great waves speeding! * * * * * Is there any one who has ever watched the great waves?--How they go! They take you right with them. My verses shall be waves. I am tired out again; but oh, I am filled with my music! There was never any poetry like it in the world! * * * * * And at the height of it I cry out: “I am free! I am free! “I won't have to stop again! “I can go to the very end of it! “And I don't care who hears me! “I am free!” * * * * * June 23d. I ate a raw egg this morning. For yesterday I let the fire go out five times, and gave up my breakfast rather than start a sixth. I wanted to save time--I thought it would be egg just the same; but I record it for future generations of poets, that the experiment is not a success. You taste raw egg all day. I shall have them all hard-boiled in the farmhouse after this. --Twenty-eight lines to-day! I had more, but I lost them, and then I fell down. --There is always a new height, but there are not always new words. My verse grows more and more incoherent, and more and more daring. I can feel the difference of a whole lifetime between it now, and what I wrote ten weeks ago. * * * * * --That is as it should be, of course. One does not reckon by days in a dungeon. I notice also that the periods get longer; it has more sweep--it leaps wider spaces--it is less easy to follow. * * * * * --Oh, let not any man read what I wrote this morning, except he stand upon the heights! * * * * * I have worn a path in the woods, deep and wide, pacing back and forth, back and forth, all day. Any one who saw me would think that I was mad. Fighting--fighting--all the time fighting! Sometimes I run--sometimes I don't know what I do. Last night I know that it grew dark, and that I was still lying flat on the dead leaves, striking my hands, that were numb with excitement. I was too weak to move--but I remember panting out, “There is nothing like that in _King Lear_!” * * * * * I brought about twenty phrases out of that, and one or two sentences. They will fall into the verse the next time it comes. * * * * * June 24th. --Listen to me, oh thou world--I will tell you something! You may take a century to understand those phrases--to stop laughing at them, perhaps--who knows? But those sentences are _real_; and they will last as long as there is a man alive to read them! When I let anything make me cease to believe in that scene, may I die! --I will shout it aloud on the streets; they are _real_! * * * * *