Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/83

71 the Strand, I think, and so down by Charing Cross station, for I went under a bridge and ended on the Embankment.

I came home with an 'aerial breathlessness' upon me: sat down to my poem and finished it. It had indeed moved me this time: two tears had fallen from my eyes. But, what I had heard called 'mysticism' by some people (meaning, as I supposed, that it seemed so to them) had run riot, and I knew that I had not written what I meant to write.—I lost patience. It seemed very hard, that I should not be allowed to try to do my best. I thought, not unbitterly, of the thousands of silly men and women, who squandered on luxury for mere luxury's sake, or hoarded for mere hoarding's sake, that which would enable me … Then it struck me that sometimes men starved.—The thought seemed like a cruel being of darkness. I looked up sharply, almost hearing a sort of clang of its departing wings. And there arose a circling black cloud, from the outer dark-smokiness of which many, many eyes looked at me, the eyes of the many, many men who had struggled and perished. I glanced up sharply again, almost hearing my own mental reply: Ay, but great men never struggled and perished: they always struggle and win! But still that circling black cloud stayed, with the many, many eyes looking at me from the outer dark-smokiness, the eyes of the many, many men who had struggled and perished.

For four days I worked at my two poems: finished them and, sauntering out that night, looked into a newspaper-shop's window by chance, and there noted a publisher's name and address on a board below, and sent him the poems next day. I had said nothing more to him than that I begged to submit them for his inspection, enclosing stamps for their return in case of rejection. I was sure that he would take them.

I spent most of my time in my room, either writing more poetry, or reading and studying a Shakespeare, which I had bought for a few pence in the Edgware Road market one Saturday night from an amusing man who was selling off a cartload of books to the stolid people as he best could. Generally in the late