and the open
sky. I was then busy with the _Evening Songs_ and of this room I wrote:

There, where in the breast of limitless space clouds are laid to sleep,
I have built my house for thee, O Poesy!

(33) _More About the Evening Songs_

At this time my reputation amongst literary critics was that of being a
poet of broken cadence and lisping utterance. Everything about my work
was dubbed misty, shadowy. However little I might have relished this at
the time, the charge was not wholly baseless. My poetry did in fact
lack the backbone of worldly reality. How, amidst the ringed-in
seclusion of my early years, was I to get the necessary material?

But one thing I refuse to admit. Behind this charge of vagueness was the
sting of the insinuation of its being a deliberate affectation--for the
sake of effect. The fortunate possessor of good eye-sight is apt to
sneer at the youth with glasses, as if he wears them for ornament. While
a reflection on the poor fellow's infirmity may be permissible, it is
too bad to charge him with pretending not to see.

The nebula is not an outside creation--it merely represents a phase; and
to leave out all poetry which has not attained definiteness would not
bring us to the truth of literature. If any phase of man's nature has
found true expression, it is worth preserving--it may be cast aside only
if not expressed truly. There is a period in man's life when his
feelings are the pathos of the inexpressible, the anguish of vagueness.
The poetry which attempts its expression cannot be called baseless--at
worst it may be worthless; but it is not necessarily even that. The sin
is not in the thing expressed, but in the failure to express it.

There is a duality in man. Of the inner person, behind the outward
current of thoughts, feelings and events, but little is known or recked;
but for all that, he cannot be got rid of as a factor in life's
progress. When the outward life fails to harmonise with the inner, the
dweller within is hurt, and his pain manifests itself in the outer
consciousness in a manner to which it is difficult to give a name, or
even to describe, and of which the cry is more akin to an inarticulate
wail than words with more precise meaning.

The sadness and pain which sought expression in the _Evening Songs_ had
their roots in the depths of my being. As one's sleep-smothered
consciousness wrestles with a nightmare in its efforts to awake, so the
submerged inner