Poor, perplexed policeman! Poor, perplexed world!
Poor, perplexed mothers and fathers, sisters and cousins
and aunts of poets!
Mit deinen schwarzbraunen Augen
Siehst du mich forschend an:
“Wer bist du, und was fehlt dir,
Du fremder, kranker Mann!”
Who does not love the poet Heine—melodious,
beautiful, bitter soul? Is there any other poet
who can mingle, in one sentence, savage irony and
tenderness that brings tears into the eyes? Who
can tell the secret of his flower-like verses?
Ich bin ein deutscher Dichter,
Bekannt im deutschen Land;
Nennt man die besten Namen
So wird auch der meine genannt.
Und was mir fehlt, du Kleine,
Fehlt manchem im deutschen Land;
Nennt man die schlimmsten Schmerzen,
So wird auch die meine genannt!
I have never seen but one beautiful thing in New York,
and that is its mighty river in the night-time.
I wander down to the docks when my work is done, and
when it is still; I sit and gaze at it until the city
is quite gone, and all its restlessness,—until
there is but that grave presence, rolling restlessly,
silently, as it has rolled for ages. It makes
no comments; it has seen many things.
To-night I sat and watched it till a tangled forest
sprang up about me, and I saw a strange, high-bowed,
storm-beaten craft glide past me, ghostly white, its
ghostly sailors gazing ahead and dreaming of spices
and gold.
* * * *
*
The old, old river—my only friend in a
whole city! It goes its way—it is
not of the hour.
It fascinates me, and I sit and sit and wonder.
I gaze into its black and gurgling depths, and whisper
what Shelley whispered: “If I should go
down there, I should know!”
* * * *
*
But no, I should not know anything.
* * * *
*
The days when thou wert not, did they trouble thee?
The days when thou art not shall trouble thee as much.
* * * *
*
May 24th.
I write this to set forth a purpose which I have for
over a year held before me. I write it that it
may serve me for a standard. I write it at a
time when my bank-account consists of twenty-five dollars,
and I mean to publish it at such a time as by the
method of plain living and high thinking, I shall
have been able to increase it a hundredfold.
We are told that a man who would write a great poem
must first make a poem of his life. An artist,
as I understand the word, is a man who has but one
joy and one purpose and one interest in life—the
creating of beauty; he is a man lifted above and set
apart from all other motives of men; a man who seeks
not wealth nor comfort nor fame, nor values these things
at all; a man whose heart is forever lonely, whose
life is an endless sorrow, and whose excuse and whose
spur and whose goal and whose consecration, is the
creating of beauty.
