"This Milton and Sterne are too used-up to be worth a nickel a-piece. Maybe, if I'd keep them, they might be worth something, some day, when you're famous," he joked.
"If you want to give me a couple of books ... how about this Keats and this Ossian? I want the Keats for myself. It will renew my courage. And—the Ossian—will you mail that book on for me, to Eos, to old Pfeiler?"
I had told him, in the course of my talking, about them both.
Pfeiler used often to talk of the greatness of Ossian's poetry ... and how he'd like to possess a volume of it again ... that is, before he grew to hate me.
Maybe if I sent him the book, with a letter, he would think less harshly of me.
I tramped through New England. My whole life had settled back into tramping ... only my Keats remained. I read and re-read his poems, not caring to write a line myself.
I worked as a dish-washer or pearl-diver for several weeks in Boston, and bought a very cheap second-hand suit.
I shifted my mind like a weather vane and decided against shipping to England, with the forlorn hope of, somehow attending Oxford or Cambridge, and studying English literature there. My old ideal of being a great adventurer and traveller had vanished, and, in its stead, came the desire to live a quiet life, devoted entirely to writing poetry, as the poet Gray lived his.