The Journal of Arthur Stirling : ("The Valley of the Shadow") Part 7

I did no writing yesterday or to-day. I have been terribly frightened.

I wrote what I had to write the day before yesterday--I could not help it.

But when I stopped my head was literally on fire, and the strangest mad throbbing in it--I stood still in fear, it felt so as if something were going to burst--my head seemed to weigh a ton. I poured cold water over it, but it made no difference--it stayed that way all night and all yesterday.

What am I to do? I dare not think--I took a long walk, and even now I find myself thinking of the book without knowing it. Imagine me sitting on a doorstep and playing for two hours with a kitten!

Why should I be handicapped in such a way as this? I had never thought of such a thing.

I was thinking about The Captive--it is my own. n.o.body has helped me--I have told not one person of it. Everything in it has come out of my soul.

May 17th.

I feel better to-day, but I hardly know what to do.

Meantime I was happy!--Think of a poet's being happy with city flowers! of a poet's being happy with store-flowers--prost.i.tute-flowers--flowers for sale!

It was all about a narcissus--"Very flower of youth, and morning's golden hour!"--as I called it once. And it danced so! (It was out on the curbstone)--and I went off happy.

Then I thought of a poem that is pure distilled ecstasy to my spirit. I will write it, and be happy again:

Sit thee by the ingle, when The sear f.a.ggot blazes bright; Spirit of a winter's night!-- ...

Sit thee there, and send abroad, With a mind self-overaw'd, Fancy, high-commission'd:--send her!

She has va.s.sals to attend her; She will bring, in spite of frost, Beauties that the earth hath lost; She will bring thee, all together, All delights of summer weather; All the buds and bells of May, From dewy sward or th.o.r.n.y spray; All the heaped Autumn's wealth, With a still, mysterious stealth; She will mix those pleasures up, Like three fit wines in a cup, And thou shall quaff it!--

Ah! And so I went along, "sun, moon, and stars forgot"--laughing and half dancing. People stared at me--and I laughed. And then I pa.s.sed three pretty girls, and I laughed, and they laughed too. I guess they thought I was going to follow them.

--But that pleasure was not in my cup, dear girls.

Some of these days I hope to live in a beautiful world, where a man may speak to a pretty girl on the street. Badness is its own punishment, let the bad world observe.

I would rather look at a beautiful woman than do anything else I know of in this world, except listen to music.

May 18th.

I often think how I shall spend my money after The Captive is done. I shall take a band of chosen youths, seekers and wors.h.i.+pers, and we shall build a house on a mountain-top and wors.h.i.+p the Lord in the beauty of music!

I shall have to begin at the beginning--I have never had any one to teach me music. But oh, if I did know!--And if I ever got hold of an orchestra--_how_ I would make it go!

And in the middle of it the astonished orchestra would see the conductor take wings unto himself and fly off through the roof.

A book that I mean to write some day will be called The Pleasures of Music, and it will sing the joys of being clean and strong, of cold water and the early morning and a free heart. It will show how all the unhappiness of men is that they live in the body and in self, and how the world is to be saved through music, which is not of the body, nor of self--which is free and infinite, swift as the winds, vast as the oceans, endless as time, and happy as whole meadows of flowers! The more who come to partake of it, the better it is; for generous is "Frau Musika," her heart is made wholly of love.

--And when I have shown all these things, Frau Musika, I shall tell of the golden lands that I have visited upon the wings of thy spirit!--

What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain!

What fields or waves or mountains, What shapes of sky or plain!

What love of thine own kind, what ignorance of pain!

May 20th.

I live among the poor people and that keeps me humble. There is not much chance for freedom, I hear them say, there are not many who can dwell in the forests. Prove your right to it--prove what you can do--the law is stern. I am not afraid of the challenge; I will prove what I can do.

But I see one here and there with whom the law is not so strict, I think.

I met a merchant the other night. I dreamed of him. He said: "I buy such goods as men need; I buy them as cheaply as I can, since life is grim. I sell them as cheaply as I can, since men are poor and suffering. I make of profit what I need to live humbly. I am not of the world's seekers; I am of the finders."

I met also a guileless fool.

We pa.s.sed a great mansion. "I should like to know the man who lives there,"

said the fool.

"Should you?" said I.

"Is he a hero?" asked the fool.

"No," said I.

"Is he a poet?" asked the fool.

"No," said I.

"Must he not be very beautiful," said the fool, "that men judge him worthy of so much beauty?"

May 21st.

I must finish this thing this time! That cry rings in my ears night after night. I am toiling upward--upward--I can see no sign of the end yet--but I must finish this time! If I had to stop with this thing haunting me--if I had to go out into that jungle of a world with this weight upon me--to repress myself with this fire in my heart--I could not bear it--I could not bear it!

And if I stopped and went out into that world again--how many weeks of agony would it cost me to get back to where I am now!

I must finish this time!