I cannot quite remember. It always seems as if it were something which I had read, but I do not believe it is. I think it is the music, the wonderful music, which all human poetry merely suggests and imperfectly transcribes. It always affects me like distant music “faint and far.” Whenever I think of the real flesh-and-blood poetry which has evidently suggested it, it loses the heavenly radiance which it had till then retained, and “fades into the light of common day.” Are you ever troubled that way? I know poetry in heaven will be just like that which goes through my brain. Just think what fine poetry there will be there, if it is so fine on earth. My goodness, what reading Tennyson and Shelley and Keats will be, when the earthly part of their writings is purged away. I think I will do nothing whatever in heaven (when I get there) but just sit and read poetry all day. Perhaps I shall be able to write it there; I think we all shall, in fact. But, fortunately for my fellow creatures, my poetical powers are now in a state of suspension—another proof of the pity of nature for man. You will be able to see that I am a great believer in heaven, more so indeed than I am in hell, though I believe in them both. But I don’t take much pleasure in thinking of the latter; I prefer to spend my time speculating on heaven with the more reason, as I fear my knowledge of that place will always remain purely theoretical. Notwithstanding, I thoroughly believe in heaven. Why, any fool can see the gates of heaven open, looking up into the blue sky through sailing white clouds, or on a starry night. But it takes a fool to do it. A wise man can’t. What do you think of the distinction between fools and wise men, as pointed out in the preface to A Fool’s Errand? I believe in the devil too, else why should men ever think this a bad world, and God a cruel God, if there were not some bad little devil in their hearts to shut their ears and blind their eyes? My sheet I see is at an end, and your patience no doubt was so long since, so I will say farewell without more ado.
With much love,
BRO. HENRY.
OBERLIN, Sunday, November 13, ’81.
DEAR SISTER HELEN,
It is against my principles to let Sunday go by without writing some home. Someway I feel as blue as a brimstone match this afternoon, and besides I have a scratchy pen—a combination of evils which I am not able to resist, so I will go out and take a walk, and try to recover my spirits.
I have taken the walk, and my spirits are even lower, if possible, than before. I walked out to the end of West College here, where I could look out on quite an expanse of desolate country. It gave me a fresh sense of how alone I was, thousands of miles away from my kindred, in this lonely country, a homeless wanderer. It is one of these days when there is nothing in Nature to cheer or comfort, positively all beauty seeming to have been withdrawn from her. Such a state of affairs is doubly depressing in a perfectly flat country like this, where all beauty depends so entirely on Nature’s moods. The beauty in Oberlin is in grass, trees, and sky, and those, alas, are all variable. The grass is all faded. The trees are stripped of their leaves, and the sky is covered by dull and dismal clouds. A cold chill is in the air, not cold enough to be stimulating, but just enough to be depressing, deadening, discouraging, chilling ardor, and repressing life. There is all the prose, but none of the poetry, of winter. Winter abounds in the first, and when the second is withdrawn, the state of affairs is gloomy indeed. I do not deny that there is plenty of poetry in winter. But we have not got to that yet. My hands are beginning to get rough and chapped, and I shudder to think of all the terrors of winter so swiftly approaching. Yet I think with as little pleasure of the terrible heat of summer. Spring alone seems pleasant to the anticipation. And yet even in spring the greatest share of the weather is disagreeable in the extreme. It seems to me that if I could once get to those happy, happy isles of the sea (troubled only by fever, small-pox, and Chinamen) I might be happy. I can think too well how merrily the boisterous trades are sweeping over the blue Pacific, and rustling in the leaves of the canefields. I can see too plainly the familiar outline of the mountains, the golden light in the tamarind tree, and the faces of you all in the old house at home. My pent-up feelings seek an outlet. I never longed for poetical expression as I do at this moment. But it has been denied me—so ordained by a merciful Providence. I said that if I were only at home I might be happy. But the heart is restless. Why are we tortured with these vain longings, these unfulfilled aspirations, unaccomplished hopes? Why are we always looking forward to something more than anything we have yet had, something better than we have yet experienced? Why do our hearts continually point us forward to something better, the best, of which all earthly joy is but the imperfect type, and the unsubstantial shadow? Is it one of “the intimations of immortality”? More likely of indigestion. Oh, you folks have no idea how I long to see you. My heart is absolutely hungry for you. What is man’s greatest blessing here on earth? Love. How, then, can it be for his good to deprive him of his greatest blessing by exiling him? But if it is not for my good, why do you keep me here, you cruel folks? Why don’t you let me come home? You see I am getting sentimental. But you will have to stand it. You ought to let a fellow be maudlin once a month. And probably you will infer from the tone of my letters that I am diligently embracing that privilege. I am not, however, then more than any other time. It is my chronic condition. I don’t use a student lamp now. Mine met with an accident last year.
November 20.—I have just read this letter over, Helen, and positively I pity you when you read it. I feel for you, but I can’t reach you, as the poet remarks. Such a douse of sentiment, you will hardly survive. However, I will send it. If I waited until I said something good before sending off a letter my handwriting would never go on an envelope. It is Sunday, of course, or I would not be spoiling this paper. A different Sunday, too, from that which drew from me the effusion on the first sheet. Winter has come at last, or at least appears to be coming. The ground is frozen hard, and there is a little bit of snow on the walks and roofs out of reach of the sun. Cold enough for a fire, certainly, and I have one, which is going out. I have poked it into life again now. We had a grand night a short time ago. It was quite dark, with no moon. The whole sky was covered by thick heavy masses of black clouds, very much lighter in places (which circumstance made their blackness and heaviness all the more striking), and the wind blew gustily and fierce. Here and there appeared an opening very small, through which a few bright stars shone. It made a deep impression on me. I never saw such a night before in my life. But such is the infinite variety of nature that a man with his eyes open will see something new in her visage till the last day of his life. While at the same time a man with his eyes in any other condition will see nothing that he thinks he has not seen before, unless it be a volcano or a waterspout. I thank the favouring divinities who assigned me my birth in a forest city between mountains and sea—situation so favourable for tuning the ear to nature’s harmonies. I suppose my thanks must be rendered to the gods of Greece, for does not the poet say: “‘Tis Jupiter who brings whate’er is great, and Venus who brings everything that’s fair.”
A few nights ago Reky and I went up to Cleveland to hear Barrett play Othello. I am not, you may possibly know, a very strong partisan of the theatre. I have been holding my opinion in a state of suspension, and still do so. I was, on the whole, disappointed in this performance. I read the play three or four years ago, and read it again the afternoon before going up. There was an excursion train, of course, and quite a large crowd from Oberlin. We had a merry time both going and coming on the train, singing College songs most uproariously, etc. I have never been to the theatre but once before, and that was at Paris, to hear Sarah Bernhardt and Mounet-Sully play in Hernani. I have been to the Opera three times, I believe,—Mignon and Faust in Cleveland, and Lohengrin in Munich. I am inclined to think that in theory at least the union of singing and acting is not conducive to the best effects. It produces a kind of heterogeneous, incongruous mixture—a kind of a mongrel affair. I am bound to say however, that my own experience will not perhaps bear this theory out. But enough of this. I said that I was disappointed in the performance. It was perhaps due to the surpassing excellence of the theatre to which I first went, and in this light it was unfortunate that my first experience of the stage should have been in the Théâtre Français. I suppose the scenery and all the appointments there were so superior as to make these seem poor in comparison. There wasn’t enough illusion here. And then the acting might well suffer
