Your letter this morning after a long, wonderful run of work. This
is really the highest day I've had--real rugged work--bronze moving
pictures before me--faces--open shirts on sunburnt breasts--and,
of course, the eternal sea. Your letter came like a sudden bag
of sunlight emptied into a mist. The water became blue and the
promontories sharp like ink lines.
And about Steve. I understand all. The draft explains his not
writing. And this war--it's like a maelstrom rising higher and
higher. Next summer for certain, possibly this Christmas, it
means I go. But rather than go as a private I'm going to enlist
voluntarily in the aviation corps. Flying only would have as much
thrill as doing the climax of a story. That's like the sea. And I'm
not panicky or worried about it. I feel in some unconscious way
that the balance of the cosmos demands it. God, nobody should drag
now! It's just like a marshfire that grows and grows to let the new
green shoots come under in spring. It's like a big song. I would
not go to fight Germany, or France or England or America. I'd go
because it's a cleanser. One must play with the song of many feet
and express with the original song. One must flash pictures to the
many eyes of their own being. Oh--it's a song, the whole thing! And
I'm looking forward to it.
Only the ones such as John and Tom shall escape. Don't you see the
joy, the peace, the grandeur in owning a scar, in being bled white?
The first year of the war, England was black with mourning. Now,
she is white.... The work is on me with talons.
I am looking only at the impossible heights--of a portrayal of
life--the rugged life in endless volumes. I have made an oath
silently with myself that in three years I shall do a book.... The
work comes now just as if I were to sit down before a fire-place
with shadows and light around stones, and were to grow interested,
with stars low on the horizon like live sparks.
And friends? A foolish question! I mean that I must be alone in
the formative thrall of work. I _did_ want your letter. But forget
pity. That is a thing that stifles soul. I do not ask, by all the
stars, I do not ask for anything. The highest of all things to you
all.
And Steve? He has too much of the Song to be trodden or be lost or
be ground in mud. You are all friends--but I must be alone now. The
work is rising....
* * * * *