It is at the publishers'. I will read books meantime and be happy.
I saw a manuscript clerk this time. She was very airy. I fear I am a sad-looking poet—my buttonholes are beginning to wear out. “We never read manuscripts out of turn,” she said. “It will take them three or four weeks.”
—Yes, good poet, that is my answer to you. I can not take your advice—I will cling to my book—I will pin all my hopes to it! I will toil and strive for it, I will haunt men with it, I will shout it from the housetops. No other book—no future book—this book! It is a great book—a great book—it is—it is!
I am not ignorant of the price it costs to do that; it is my fate that I have to pay it. I can see, for instance, how Wordsworth paid it—Wordsworth, our greatest, our noblest poet since Milton. He had his sacred inspiration, and the world laughed at it; and so, grimly, systematically, he set to work to teach them—to say to all men—to say to himself—to say day and night—“It is poetry! It is great poetry! It is—it is!”
And of course at last he made them believe him; and when they believed him, he—Wordsworth—was a matter-of-fact, self-centered, dull and poor old man.
—It all rests with you, good world! How long must I stand here and knock at the door?