I thank you very much.
The earnest stanzas I sent to England for one who wanted them even
more than I. I don't know how people can keep up their prejudices
against spiritualism with tears in their eyes,--how they are not, at
least, thrown on the "wish that it might be true," and the
investigation of the phenomena, by that abrupt shutting in their faces
of the door of death, which shuts them out from the sight of their
beloved. My tendency is to beat up against it like a crying child. Not
that this emotional impulse is the best for turning the key and
obtaining safe conclusions,--no. I did not write before because I
always do shrink from touching my own griefs, one feels at first so
sore that nothing but stillness is borne. It is only after, when one
is better, that one can express one's self at all. This is so with me,
at least, though perhaps it ought not to be so with a poet.
If you saw my "De Profundis" you must understand that it was written
nearly twenty years ago, and referred to what went before. Mr.
Howard's affliction made me think of the MS. (in reference to a sermon
of Dr. Beecher's in the "Independent"), and I pulled it out of a
secret place and sent it to America, not thinking that the publication
would fall in so nearly with a new grief of mine as to lead to
misconceptions. In fact the poem would have been an exaggeration in
that case, and unsuitable in other respects.
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