It maybe fancy on my part, but I have a feeling that, all unconsciously
to Mr. Burroughs, a sentence or two in Mr. Wasson's letter of September
29, 1862, had something to do with inspiring the mood of trustfulness
and the attitude of waiting in serenity, which gave birth to this
poem:--
... The book, too, all in good season. Life for you is very long,
and you can take your time. Take it by all means. Give yourself large
leisure to do your best.
Whether or not this is so, I am sure the sympathy and understanding of
such a man as Mr. Wasson was a godsend to our struggling writer, and was
one of the most beautiful instances in his life of "his own" coming to
him.
"Waiting" seems to have gone all over the world. It has been several
times set to music, and its authorship has even been claimed by others.
It has been parodied, more's the pity; and spurious stanzas have
occasionally been appended to it; while an inferior stanza, which the
author dropped years ago, is from time to time resurrected by certain
insistent ones. Originally, it had seven stanzas; the sixth, discarded
by its author, ran as follows:--
You flowret, nodding in the wind,
Is ready plighted to the bee;
And, maiden, why that look unkind?
For, lo! thy lover seeketh thee.
This stanza is a detraction from the poem as we know it, and assuredly
its author has a right to drop it. Concerning the fifth stanza, Mr.
Burroughs says he has never liked it, and has often substituted one
which he wrote a few years ago. The stanza he would reject is--
The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder heights;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delights.