‘Driven from home to home, as a Renouncer, I gain the poetry of each. Keys of gold, silver, iron, lead, are in my casket. Though no one loves me as I would be loved, I yet love many well enough to see into their eventual beauty. Meanwhile, I have no fetters, and when one perceives how others are bound in false relations, this surely should be regarded as a privilege. And so varied have been my sympathies, that this isolation will not, I trust, make me cold, ignorant, nor partial. My history presents much superficial, temporary tragedy. The Woman in me kneels and weeps in tender rapture; the Man in me rushes forth, but only to be baffled. Yet the time will come, when, from the union of this tragic king and queen, shall be born a radiant sovereign self.’
‘I have quite a desire to try my powers in a narrative
poem; but my head teems with plans, of which there
will be time for very few only to take form. Milton,
it is said, made for himself a list of a hundred subjects
for dramas, and the recorder of the fact seems to think
this many. I think it very few, so filled is life with
innumerable themes.’
‘Sunday Evening. — I have employed some hours of
the day, with great satisfaction, in copying the Poet's
Dreams from the Pentameron of Landor. I do not
often have time for such slow, pleasing labor. I have
thus imprinted the words in my mind, so that they will
often recur in their original beauty.
‘I have added three sonnets of Petrarca, all written after the death of Laura. They are among his noblest, all pertinent to the subject, and giving three aspects of
