Why should I not try "The Atlantic" with this poem?--if you have not already done so. I could write a brief note about it, saying what _you_ could not say, and possibly winning attention to the work. If you say so I will. It is impossible to imagine a magazine editor rejecting that amazing poem. I have read it at least twenty times with ever increasing admiration. Your book, by the way, is still my constant companion--I carry it in my pocket and read it over and over, in the street cars and everywhere. _All_ the poems are good, though the "Testimony" and "Memorial Day" are supreme--the one in grandeur, the other in feeling. I send you a criticism in a manuscript letter from a friend who complains of your "obscurity," as many have the candor to do. It requires candor to do that, for the fault is in the critic's understanding. Still, one who understands Shakspeare and Milton is not without standing as a complaining witness in the court of literature. * * * * * My favorite translation of Homer is that of Pope, of whom it is the present fashion to speak disparagingly, as it is of Byron. I know all that can be said against them, and say _some_ of it myself, but I wish their detractors had a little of their brains. I know too that Pope's translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey are rather paraphrases than translations. But I love them just the same, while wondering (with you, doubtless) what so profoundly affected Keats when he "heard Chapman speak out loud and bold." Whatever it was, it gave us what Coleridge pronounced the best sonnet in our language; and Lang's admiration of Homer has given us at least the next best. Of course there must be something in poems that produce poems--in a poet whom most poets confess their king. I hold (with Poe) that there is no such thing as a _long_ poem--a poem of the length of an Epic. It must consist of poetic passages connected by _recitativo_, to use an opera word; but it is perhaps better for that. If the writer cannot write "sustained" poetry the reader probably could not read it. Anyhow, I vote for Homer. I am passing well, but shall soon seek the mountains, though I hope to be here when Scheff points his prow this way. Would that you were sailing with him! I've been hearing all about all of you, for Eva Crawford has been among you "takin' notes," and Eva's piquant comments on what and whom she sees are delicious reading. I should suppose that _you_ would appreciate Eva--most persons don't. She is the best letter writer of her sex--who are all good letter writers--and she is much beside. I may venture to whisper that you'd find her estimate of your work and personality "not altogether displeasing."