and as a consequence my letters, when they cease to be mere
journalistic memoranda, float out into a sea of unrestrained revery.

Yet I would ask you to be patient with me in this matter. From the first,
even before I saw you here in New York, I felt that somehow you might, by
mere patience and indulgence, if you would, re-establish the lost bond in
my life; that somehow the shadow of your personality was fitted to move
among the shadows of my intellectual world. What a strange compliment to
send a young woman!--for compliment it seems in my eyes.

Meanwhile, as some explanation of this intellectual twilight into which I
would so generously introduce you, I am sending you a little book I wrote
and foolishly printed several years ago on the quiet life of the Hindus.
The mood of the book still returns to me at times, though I have cast away
its philosophy as impracticable. I look for peace in the way that Plato
trod, and some day I shall write my palinode in that spirit. Let me, in
this connection, copy out a few verses I wrote last night and the night
before. It is my first digression into poetry since I was a boy:

THE THREE COMMANDS

I

Out of this meadow-land of teen and dole,
Because my heart had harboured in its cell
One prophet's word, an Angel bore my soul
Through starry ways to God's high citadel.

There in the shadow of a thousand domes
I walked, beyond the echo of earth's noise;
While down the streets between the happy homes
Only the murmur passed of infinite joys.

Then said my soul: "O fair-engirdled Guide!
Show me the mansion where I, too, may won:
Here in forgetful peace I would abide,
And barter earth for God's sweet benison."

"Nay," he replied, "not thine the life Elysian,
Live thou the world's life, holding yet thy vision
A hope and memory, till thy course be run."

II

Then said my soul: "I faint and seek my rest;
The glory of the vision veils mine eyes;
These infinite murmurs beating at my breast
Turn earthly music into plangent sighs.

"Because thou biddest, I will tread the maze
With men my brothers, yet my hands withhold
From building at the Babel towers they raise,