Afterward when you have recovered you sit down, and for two or three hours you write; you have it whole in your memory now--you have but to put it down. And this forlorn, wet, bedraggled thing--this miserable, stammering, cringing thing--_this_ is your poem! * * * * * Some day the world will realize these things, and then they will present their poor poets with diamonds and palaces, and other things that do not help. I wrote this, and then I leaned back, tired out. My thoughts turned to Shakespeare, and while I was thinking of him-- But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill! * * * * * April 11th. I have not done much to-day. I spent the morning brooding over the opening speech. It is somber and terrible, but I have not gotten it right. It must have a tread--a tread like an orchestra! Ah, how I wish I had an orchestra!--I would soon do it then--_“So bist nun ewig du verdammt!”_ The secret of the thing is iteration. I must find a word that is like a hammer-stroke. I have tried twenty, but I have not found the one. * * * * * --I spent the rest of the day thinking over the whole first act, mapping it out, so to speak. I have often fancied a resemblance between The Captive and the C-minor symphony; I wonder if any one else would have thought of it. It is not merely the opening--it is the whole content of the thing--the struggle of a prisoned spirit. I would call The Captive a symphony, and print the C-minor themes in it, only it would seem fanciful.--But it would not really be fanciful to put the second theme opposite the thought of freedom--of the blue sky and the dawning spring. All except the scherzo. I couldn't find room for the scherzo. Men who have wrestled with the demons of hell do not tumble around like elephants, no matter how happy they are. I wish I could take out Beethoven's scherzos! My heart leaps when I think of my one big step. I have put those pages away--I shall not look at them again for a month. Then I can judge them. * * * * * April 13th. A cable-car conductor and a poet! I think that will be a story worth telling. I have tried many and various occupations, but I have not found one so favorable to the study of poetry as my last. I should have made out very well--if I had not been haunted by The Captive. With everything else you do you are more or less hampered by having to sell your brain; and also by having to obey some one. But a cable-car is an unlimited monarchy; and all you have to do is to collect fares and pull the bell, both of which duties are quite mechanical. And besides that you receive princely wages--and can live off one-third of them, if you know how; and that means that you need only work one-third of the time, and can write your poetry the rest of it!