“No,” said I, “I will not.”
I might have been a partner by this time, had I said Yes, and had a palace and a large waistcoat too.
“Then what will you be?” asked the great-uncle.
“I will be a poet,” said I.
“You mean you will be a loafer?” said he.
“Yes,” said I—disliking argument—“I will be a loafer.”
And so I went away, and while I went I was thinking, far down in my soul. And I said: “It must be everything or nothing; either I am a poet or I am not. I will act as if I were; I will burn my bridges behind me. If I am, I will win—for you can not kill a poet; and if I am not, I will die.”
Thus is it perilous.
I fight the fight with all my soul; I give every ounce of my strength, my will, my hope, to the making of myself a poet. And when the time comes I write my poem. Then if I win, I win empires; and if I lose—
“You put all your eggs into one basket,” some one once said to me.