* * * * *

’"So when men bury us beneath the yew
Thy crimson-stained mouth a rose will be,
And thy soft eyes lush blue-bells dimmed with dew;
And when the white narcissus wantonly
Kisses the wind, its playmate, some faint joy
Will thrill our dust, and we will be again fond maid and boy.

                  ’"...  How my heart leaps up
    To think of that grand living after death
  In beast and bird and flower, when this cup,
    Being filled too full of spirit, bursts for breath,
  And with the pale leaves of some autumn day,
  The soul, earth’s earliest conqueror, becomes earth’s last great prey.

’"O think of it!  We shall inform ourselves
Into all sensuous life; the goat-foot faun,
The centaur, or the merry, bright-eyed elves
That leave they:  dancing rings to spite the dawn
Upon the meadows, shall not be more near
Than you and I to Nature’s mysteries, for we shall hear

    ’"The thrush’s heart beat, and the daisies grow,
    And the wan snowdrop sighing for the sun
  On sunless days in winter; we shall know
    By whom the silver gossamer is spun,
  Who paints the diapered fritillaries,
  On what wide wings from shivering pine to pine the eagle flies.

* * * * *

    ’"We shall be notes in that great symphony
    Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
  And all the live world’s throbbing heart shall be
    One with our heart; the stealthy, creeping years
  Have lost their terrors now; we shall not die—­
  The universe itself shall be our Immortality!”

Have you forgotten how you chanted these, and told me they were Oscar Wilde’s.  You had set my feet firmly on earth for the first time, there was great darkness with me for many weeks, but, as it lifted, the earth seemed greener than ever of old, the sunshine a goodlier thing, and verily a blessedness indeed to draw the breath of life.  I had learnt “the value and significance of flesh”; I no longer scorned a carnal diet, and once again I turned my eyes on the damsels in the street.

’But an influence soon came to me that kept me from going all the way with you, and taught me to say, “I know not,” where you would say, “It is not.”  Blessings on thee who didst throw a rainbow, that may mean a promise, across the void, that awoke the old instinct of faith within me, and has left me “an Agnostic with a faith,” quite content with “the brown earth,” if that be all, but with the added significance a mystery gives to living;—­thou who first didst teach me Love’s lore aright, to thee do I owe this thing.

’To J.A.W.  I owe the first great knowledge of that other love between man and man, which Whitman has since taught us to call “the dear love of comrades”; and to him I owe that I never burned those early rhymes, or broke my little reed—­an unequivocal service to me, whatever the public, should it be consulted, may think.