The Journal of Arthur Stirling : ("The Valley of the Shadow") Part 13

I shall have them all hard-boiled in the farmhouse after this.

--Twenty-eight lines to-day! I had more, but I lost them, and then I fell down.

--There is always a new height, but there are not always new words. My verse grows more and more incoherent, and more and more daring. I can feel the difference of a whole lifetime between it now, and what I wrote ten weeks ago.

--That is as it should be, of course. One does not reckon by days in a dungeon.

I notice also that the periods get longer; it has more sweep--it leaps wider s.p.a.ces--it is less easy to follow.

--Oh, let not any man read what I wrote this morning, except he stand upon the heights!

I have worn a path in the woods, deep and wide, pacing back and forth, back and forth, all day. Any one who saw me would think that I was mad.

Fighting--fighting--all the time fighting! Sometimes I run--sometimes I don't know what I do. Last night I know that it grew dark, and that I was still lying flat on the dead leaves, striking my hands, that were numb with excitement. I was too weak to move--but I remember panting out, "There is nothing like that in _King Lear_!"

I brought about twenty phrases out of that, and one or two sentences. They will fall into the verse the next time it comes.

June 24th.

--Listen to me, oh thou world--I will tell you something! You may take a century to understand those phrases--to stop laughing at them, perhaps--who knows? But those sentences are _real_; and they will last as long as there is a man alive to read them!

When I let anything make me cease to believe in that scene, may I die!

--I will shout it aloud on the streets; they are _real_!

And there has been nothing like them done for some years, either.

June 25th.

To-day you may imagine me frantically throwing stones at a squirrel. I said: "If I get him I won't have to go to the farmhouse to-morrow."

I had had nothing to eat but bread and apples for two meals, and I couldn't stand that again.

I had fried squirrel and fried apples for supper. It was a very curious repast.

And I was hungry, and I ate too much! That made me wild, of course, and I flung all my apples away into the woods. May they feed new squirrels!

June 26th.

I get up every morning like--like the sun! I overflow with laughter--nothing frightens me now. I never knew what was the matter with me before--it was simply that I could not fight as I chose. If ever I go back again to have my soul pent up in the cities of men!

I am full of it--full of it! I grapple with it all the day, I can not get enough of it. I do crazy things.

And the harder it is the faster I go! This thing has been my torturing--it has made me fight and live. That is really the truth.

And I am coming to the end--really to the end!

June 27th.

A rainy day! And no gla.s.s in my house--only a board cover to the window. I made myself a nest on the sheltered side.

Nearer! Nearer!

June 29th.

Wandering through the woods dreaming of a banquet-hall.--The guests are witty.

I have put into the mouths of the guests all that the world has said to me, since first I went poetical.

June 30th.

To-day I got a big stock of things to eat. I count my time not by days, but by loaves of bread and dozens of hard-boiled eggs.

--This book goes out into the world, not to be judged, but to judge!

July 1st.

You do not hear much from a man in a battle, just now and then a cry.