THE WEALD,

Nº SEVENOAKS.

April 15th 1910.

My dear Thomas,

A book on the influence of women on people would
be very interesting if I can. It will be a great pleasure to
arrest you. There is only one poet who I can think of to be
influenced strongly by a woman, and that is Wordsworth.

I never write a love poem but when I love some real woman
in my mind; either one I love well in the flesh or one I meet now, ad
sore looks like life. Perhaps the women that way affected me most was
me I met on the Thomas Enbankment, whom I had never met before,
and loved not then since. I followed her about for a considerable time,
and liked her very well, no matter of what age or station in life, I loved
her or her. Then our affective indifference gave her a good clearance to
do by. It was while disaffection, that I at last came to the
conclusion that she led nothing to do with me, and so her loss out of mind.
I was linking of that woman when I wrote the lines in Nature Poems,
begining "Now I can see what Helen was".

The poem called "Love's Bird" (Nature Poems) was written after seeing
a woman whom I had seen a few minutes ago, laughing a welcome to another.
It was the wettest day I have ever heard, beginning quite merrily and
ending like a sweet red fall of rain, so I was brown
as a singer to have a very nice contralto voice. Her laugh was so
musical that it struck one as roadly to hear as for itself, without
harming the cause ad joining another voice to hers. It was after
taking a strong liking to her, ad then laughing a welcome to
another. Her voice was like 'Love's Bird'.