I wrote what I had to write the day before yesterday—I could not help it. But when I stopped my head was literally on fire, and the strangest mad throbbing in it—I stood still in fear, it felt so as if something were going to burst—my head seemed to weigh a ton. I poured cold water over it, but it made no difference—it stayed that way all night and all yesterday.
What am I to do? I dare not think—I took a long walk, and even now I find myself thinking of the book without knowing it. Imagine me sitting on a doorstep and playing for two hours with a kitten!
Why should I be handicapped in such a way as this? I had never thought of such a thing.
I was thinking about The Captive—it is my own. Nobody has helped me—I have told not one person of it. Everything in it has come out of my soul.
May 17th.
I feel better to-day, but I hardly know what to do.
Meantime I was happy!—Think of a poet's being happy with city flowers! of a poet's being happy with store-flowers—prostitute-flowers—flowers for sale!
It was all about a narcissus—“Very flower of youth, and morning's golden hour!”—as I called it once. And it danced so! (It was out on the curbstone)—and I went off happy.