And he was about to carve me piecemeal while I lay bound and
helpless before him. The dream persisted so strongly that, after I
awoke, I still seemed to see him standing in a corner of my room. And I
cried aloud. And felt foolish when it brought my father in. So I stopped
making up adventures, especially the disagreeable ones, because they
eventually had more effect on me than they did on my auditors.
* * * * *
My father had changed boarding places ... but, as usual, it was not
better food, but a little, dark widow that attracted him to that
boarding house.
* * * * *
I now devoted myself exclusively to poetry--the reading of it. I always
had a book in my pocket. I read even at meals, despite my father's
protests that it was bad-mannered.
* * * * *
Breasted's book store, down in Newark, was where I was nearly always to
be found, in the late afternoons.
It was there, in the murky light of a dying twilight, that I came Upon
the book that has meant more to my life than any other book ever
written....
For a long time I had known of John Keats, that there was such a poet.
But, in the fever of my adolescence, in the ferment of my tramp-life, I
had not yet procured his poetry....
Now, here were his complete works, right at hand, in one volume .
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