“Will this be my end—a swinging of arms and legs during the daytime and then different shades of sleep or sensual bravado at night?” he asked himself drowsily—a well-remembered sentence that needed little consciousness.
Suddenly, an emotional revolt within him tore against his physical lethargy, like lightnings from some unguessed depth of his soul, and he was astonished to find himself sitting upright in the chair. He saluted the victory joyously.
“By God, I won’t give in as easily as this,” he whispered to the purple grapes on the tan wall-paper, addressing them because their ugliness was at least helplessly inert. “You’re concrete symbols, if nothing else, and you don’t stumble amidst unconquered clouds. I’ll go to the park and try to write a poem.”
Agreeably amazed at the returning vestige of strength in his legs he walked to the public-park and sat down upon a bench. Ignoring the people who were strolling or romping around him he bent over his paper-pad and tugged at the smooth insolence of rhyme and meter, but the fight was an uneven one since his mind and emotions were still brittle and dazed from their day of hurried subjection. After crumbling sheets of paper for two hours he wrote:
TO A SAND-PIPER
One blast—a mildly frightened little host
Of liquid sprites, each holding one high note,
Aroused from some repentance in the throat
Of this grey-yellow bird who skims the coast—
And silence. Far off I can somehow feel