I do not attach much importance to the publication or non publication of my poetry and never have done. Most of it (the published part) appeared five, ten, fifteen or even thirty or more years after they were written. The few recently published in magazines (not all of them new, e.g. the sonnets) owed their fate to Nolini's eagerness and not to my initiative. But the vast bulk of what I have written (long poems mostly) lies on shelf and in drawer, most of it for more than a decade, awaiting either dissolution or an interminable revision or total recasting which at the present rate may well retain them there a decade or two more. But that is my own idiosyncrasy—it cannot be a rule or example for others.
I have a hundred lives before me yet To grasp thee in, O spirit ethereal, Be sure I will with heart insatiate Pursue thee like a hunter through them all. Thou yet shalt turn back on the eternal way And with awakened vision watch me come Smiling a little at errors past, and lay Thy eager hand in mine, its proper home. Meanwhile made happy by thy happiness I shall approach thee in things and people dear And in thy spirit's motions half-possess Loving what thou hast loved, shall feel thee near, Until I lay my hands on thee indeed Somewhere among the stars, as 'twas decreed.
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