ou storm
upon the star!' would make much worse poetry, but much better sense....
Isn't it strange that I can't feel this about Wordsworth? He was better
off without humor, for all his solemn-donkey spots--and it's better for
us that he didn't have it. It's probably better for us, too, that
Shelley didn't have it--but it wasn't better for _him_.
Diddle-diddle-dumpling--what stuff all this is! Go to bed, Susan."

* * * * *

"There's no use pretending things are different, Susan Blake; you might
as well face them and see them through, open-eyed. What does being in
love mean?

"I suppose if one is really in love, head over heels, one doesn't care
what it means. But I don't like pouncing, overwhelming things--things
that crush and blast and scorch and blind. I don't like cyclones and
earthquakes and conflagrations--at least, I've never experienced any,
but I know I shouldn't like them if I did. But I don't think I'd be so
terribly afraid of them--though I might. I think I'd be more--sort
of--indignant--disgusted."

* * * * *

Editor's Note: Such English! But pungent stylist as Susan is now
acknowledged to be, she is still, in the opinion of academic critics,
not sufficiently attentive to formal niceties of diction. She remains
too wayward, too impressionistic; in a word, too personal. I am inclined
to agree, and yet--am I?

* * * * *

"It's all very well to stamp round declaiming that you're captain of
your soul, but if an earthquake--even a tiny one--comes and shakes your
house like a dice box and then scatters you and the family out of it
like dice--it wouldn't sound very appropriate for your epitaph. 'I am
the master of my fate' would always look silly on a tombstone. Why
aren't tombstones a good test for poetry--some poetry? I've never seen
anything on a tombstone that looked real--not even the names and dates.

"But _does_ love have to be like an earthquake? If it does, then it's
just a blind force, and I don't like blind forces. It's stupid to be
blind oneself; but it's worse to have blind stupid things butting into
one and pushing one about.

"Hang it, I don't believe love has to be stupid and blind, and go
thrashing through things! Ambo isn't thrashing through things--or Phil
either. But, of course, they wouldn't. That's exactly what I mean about
love; it can be tamed, civilized. No, not civilized--just tamed.
_Co