“As I say, it is not my rule to answer letters such as yours. The cry of the suffering is in the air every instant, if we heeded it we should never get our work done. But I am willing to read your poem, if this letter has not chilled your ardor.”
—Last night I read The Captive again, and it brought the tears into my eyes; and so my ardor is not chilled, good professor—and I will send you the poem.
—But as for going out into the world—I think I am learning what men are pretty fast!
December 23d.
My poem stirs me, but it does not last. My whole habit of mind seems to me to be changed—a deep, settled melancholy has come over me; I go about mournful, haunted. I read—but all the time I am as if I had forgotten something, and as if half my mind were on that. I have lost all my ardor—I look back at what I was, and it brings the tears into my eyes. It is gone! It is gone! It will not ever come back!
And each day I am drawing nearer to the rapids—to the ghastly prospect of having to drag myself back to work!
Oh my God, what shall I do?—tell me anything, and I will do it! Give me a hope—any hope—even a little one!