Divine_. I tore this from the body of the book and kept it under my
pillow.

I would draw it forth, press it against myself, speak soft words of
affection to it, caress and kiss it, fix my mind on it as if it were a
living presence. Often the grey light of dawn would put its ashen hand
across my sunken cheeks before dead-heavy, exhausted sleep proved kind
to me....

* * * * *

Again: my imagination grew to be all graveyards, sepulchral urns,
skeletons. How beautiful it would be to die young and a poet, to die
like the young English poet, Henry Kirke White, whose works I was so
enamoured of. The wan consumptive glamour of his career led me, as he
had done, to stay up all night, night after night, studying....

* * * * *

After the surging and mounting of that in me which I could not resist,
several hours of strange, abnormal calm would ensue and for that space I
would swing calm and detached from myself, like a luminous, disembodied
entity. And then it was that I would write and write. The verses would
come rushing from my pen. I must hurry with them before my early death
overtook me.

* * * * *

There were two visions I saw continually in my sleep: