Norwich bulletin., 1910-05-21
Cwritten for The Bulletin.)

Brother mine, you beg me to take up my pen again and you ask me to tell you why I ever laid it down. Perhaps it was because real life, with its strug- sles, it's joys, it's baffiements, it's tri- umphs and victories, is so much more absorbing than any mere invention of my own could be- because have grown to feel such reverence for 1t and all that it involves. and because my fellow travellers, men and women and children, have become not only dearer to me but sacred If, then. l do not write of real life, what remains but the telling of fairy tales? But neither can genuine fairy tales be written today. Either our tired old world has Outgrown its 'baby-day de- light in sun myths and shining heroes and demigods. or, now that we are getting to know the truths of nature in their naked beauty, it has lost pa tience with sym When the real appears the unreal vanisheS in dream. Modern novels weary me little, I be- Iieve. You and I know, brother mine. that human beings do not work their way through long, elaborate, intricate plots, but that we do all live by the law of cause and effect. Real life is compelling, sublime
 Who better than the painter or the poet knows the pain of impotency in self-expression? Who but a dumb genius is conscious of that something g within that is like bird beating against the bars of its cage in the struggle to fly free; the something within that is never at rest never at peace, whose heart is bursting, yet whose lips are forever dumb? It is be- cause l know that all men have this hidden genius, this inward urge, that I confess to mine. The supreme ef- fort Of creative energy is to bring hid den truth into visible expression. The supreme tragedy of life is in the con- fIict between the inner and the outer, i'm Ina GfI i'm of ha S01lt for freedom from it's swaddling bands As look into the faces of my fellow travellers I dream glad dreams of the coming day when the something with in that is struggling now in them and in me, half-smothered perhaps under the heavy muffiings of ignorance and slavery to convention, shall have grown and grown and learned, at last, to stretch its wings to high and noble flight.
 When was a child I wrote as a child, for the sheer love of it. Some times I dare to hope that years hence when I am old enough to be 8 child again, the gift of song may come sing ing back to me on wings. For my lit tie gift has been my pureSt joy. Poets will tell you that the birth of a lyric is as though the morning stars sang together. It brings with it no labor nor sorrow It wells forth without effort-in lines. in couplets. now in one metre, now in another-and all that the poet has to do is to let the sweet notes come. Verses are written and little songs are sung as the robin redbreast stngs-because he cannot help it. The infinite essence expresses itself in his gay little morning call, his mating lay, his even-song- Even so, as naturally and as spontaneously, song is the utterance of the poet, the singer the soaring swallow. bird of heaven, the eternal child.
 
 if were a race horse, I know 1 should race splendidly, neck and neck. but I fear I should pant for my life