“Jan. 2nd. ... Read through and revised ‘Bacchus in India.’ Added the (I think good) adjective ‘sun-sparkled wood....”

Poetry is a glorious rebirth of prose. When a beautiful thought can be uttered in worthy prose: best so. But when it moves through the mind in music, and shapes itself to a lyric rhythm, then it should find expression in poetry. The truest poets are those who can most exquisitely capture, and concentrate in a few words, this haunting rhythm.

Jan. 3rd. The morning broke well, though not so promisingly as yesterday.... Caught the 9 a.m. train for Albano-Laziale. Marnio is a fine and picturesque hill-city. After passing it we admired the view of the Lake of Albano, with its abrupt variations of light and profound shadow. Arrived at Albano we walked by the way of the Viaduct to L’Ariccia, with lovely views of the Campagna to the right: of Monte Cavo and Rocca di Papa to the left. Then on by a lovely road to Genzano. Having gone through the lower part and out again into the Campagna we turned southward, and in due time reached the high ground, with its olive-orchards, looking down upon the Lake of Nemi. It looked lovely in its grey-blue stillness, with all the sunlit but yet sombre winterliness around. Nemi, itself, lay apparently silent and lifeless, ‘a city of dream,’ on a height across the lake. One could imagine that Nemi and Genzano had once been the same town, and had been riven asunder by a volcano. The lake-filled crater now divides these two little hill-set towns.... Walked through Albano to the N.W. gate, past the ancient tomb, and along the beautiful ilex-bordered road leading to Castel-Gandolfo. Saw two Capuchin friars with extraordinary faces. They fitted the scene. Magnificent views of the Campagna, tinted with a faint pink-grey mist: of Ostea, etc.: and of the strange dreamful, partially sunlit Tyrrhene sea. Then through Castel Gandolfo, with lovely views of Lake Albano. Broke our fast with some apples. Down the steep front till we joined the road just above the little station, where we caught the train 10 minutes later. The Aqua Felice and Claudian Aqueducts seen to great advantage in returning across the Campagna to Rome.

Jan. 5th. A fine morning, with a delicate hint of Spring in the air.... Caught the train for Champino, near Frascati. The officials at the station seemed amazed at our descending there. No one ever does so, it seems! There was literally no regular way out of the station, and when I asked how we were to get out the man did not know. Neither he nor the clerk, nor the others who gathered round knew the road back to Rome! At last some one from the train suggested that if we struck across country we would come to the Via Appia. We had a pleasant walk across a barren part of the Campagna intersected by railway cuttings, and at last came to a place called Frattochie, whence a road led us to the Via Appia Nuova. From this again we struck across a field and came upon the Via Appia Antica, adown which we had a splendid and absolutely solitary walk. We saw no one but a few shepherds at a distance, with their large white dogs and sheep. Often stopped among the ruins, or at the top of one of the grassy tombs to hear the wind among the pines, along the grass, or in the crevices of the wall. A few drops of rain fell as we neared the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and soon the rain-storm, which we had watched approaching across the Campagna, came on. The first three wayside trattorie we came to were shut, but in the fourth, a peasant’s resort, we got some bread, and white and poor Marino. We shared some of the bread with a large dog, and gave some wine to a malarious-looking poor devil of a labourer. Returned by the Gate of San Sebastiano.

Jan. 8th. ... Bought L’Evolution des Genres dans l’Histoire de la LittÉrature by Ferdinand BrunetiÈre; Roux’s book on Italian Literature; Pierre Loti’s Mariage de Loti. After dinner copied out ‘Rebirth’ (Spring’s Advent) to send to Belford’s, and ‘The Sheik’ for N. Y. Independent.

This forenoon the house nearly opposite fell in. We saw one man brought out dead. Seven others were said to be buried in the ruins. The King came later on and himself helped one of the wounded out and took him to the hospital.

Jan. 9th. Wet and rain. The Campagna covered with snow. In the forenoon I wrote four more of my ‘Ebb and Flow’ Series of Sea Poems—‘Phosphorescence before Storm’—‘Tempest Music’—‘Dead Calm: Noon’ and ‘Dead Calm: Midnight.’ The others were written some on the French coast some on the English in 1887. ‘Tempest-Music’ and the two ‘Dead Calm’ are as good if not better than any in the series. In all the latter I care most for the ‘Swimmer at Sunrise’ and ‘The Dead-Calm-Noon’: also for ‘Tempest Music.’

... After dinner read to Lill for a bit including the prose version (outline) of my “Lilith.”

To-day the anniversary of the Death of Victor Emmanuel, 13 years ago. The Italians idolise his memory, and call him “The Father of the Country.” He is rapidly becoming a Presiding Deity. 10th rewrote and greatly improved “Phosphorescence.” Its two opening lines, originally,

are better. Should have preferred “wild” to “high” in this line, but the 4th terminal is “wild.” Perhaps not, after all.

Jan. 16th. Although it was so cold and wintry with signs of snow in suspension caught the train for Tivoli. The scenery extremely beautiful, and doubly fascinating and strange from the whirling snow falling every here and there, in strangely intermittent and separate fashion. The sheep and disconsolate shepherds on one high healthy part made a fantastic foreground. At Tivoli, which was like a hill town in Scotland in midwinter, with a storm raging, we walked past the first cascades, then up a narrow hill-path partly snowed up, partly frozen, to the open country beyond. Then back and into a trattoria where we had lunch of wine, omelette, bread, fruit, and coffee.

Jan. 17th. Midwinter with a vengeance. Rome might be St. Petersburg. Snow heavy and a hard frost. Even the Fountain of the Tritone hung all over with long spears and pendicles of ice.—Later, I went out, to walk to and fro on the Pincio Terrace in the whirling snow, which I enjoyed beyond words. There was a lull, and then I saw the storm clouds sweep up from the Maremma, across the Campagna and blot out Rome bit by bit. Walking to and fro I composed the lyric, beginning:

Jan. 22nd. In the evening read through Elihu Vedder’s Primitive Folk. There is a definite law in the evolution of sexual morale, I am sure, if one could only get at it. The matter is worth going into, both for Fundamental and Contemporary and Problematical Ethics.

Jan. 27th. Elizabeth and I went to the opening lecture of the ArchÆological Society, at the Hotel Marini. Lord Dufferin in the Chair. Mr. Porter, U. S. Minister, delivered an address, mainly on Cicero.... Lord Dufferin afterwards told us incidentally that a friend of his had gone into a book shop in the Corso and asked for Max O’Rell: En AmÉrique. The bookseller said he neither had the book nor had he heard of it: now the visitor persisted and the bookseller in despair exclaimed, ‘Dio mio, Signor, I never even heard of Marc AurÈle having been in America!’

Jan. 30th. After lunch we went for a drive in the Campagna.... Delighting in the warm balmy air, the superb views, the space and freedom, the soft turfy soil under foot, the excited congregation of larks twittering as they wheeled about, soon to pair, and one early songster already trilling his song along the flowing wind high overhead.

Between 9 p.m. and 12 p.m. my ears were full of music. Wrote the Sospiri, ‘The Fountain of the Aqua Paola’; ‘Ruins’; ‘High Noon at Midsummer on the Campagna’; ‘Sussurri’; ‘Breath of the Grass’; ‘Red Poppies’; and the lyric Spring.

Jan. 31st. Wrote to-day. ‘The Mandolin’ (Sospiri di Roma) (115 lines). In afternoon wrote ‘All’ Ora della Stella’ (Vesper Bells), partly from memory of what I have heard, several times, and partly modified by a poem I chanced to see to-day, Fogazzaro’s ‘A Sera.’

February 2nd. Second day of the Carnival. Wrote all forenoon and part of afternoon. Took up and revised ‘The Fountain of the Aqua Paola’ and added so largely to it as to make it a new poem. It ended with ‘Eternal Calm.’ Also wrote ‘The Fallen Goddess’—about 250 lines in length. In the evening wrote ‘Bats’ Wings’ (26 ll) and ‘Thistledown’ (Spring on the Campagna) (71 ll).

Such bursts of uncontrollable poetic impulse as came to me to-day, and the last three days, only come rarely in each year. It was in such a burst last year (1889?) that I wrote ‘The Weird of Michael Scott’ (each part at a single sitting).

Feb. 4th. Wrote the Sospiro ‘To my Dream.’

Feb. 5th. Between 10 p.m. and 1.30 a.m. wrote the poem which I think I will call ‘Fior di Memoria’ (about 175 lines).

Feb. 7th. We went to Ettore Roesler Franz’s studio. His water-colour drawings of (mediÆval) Rome as it was from the middle of the century to within the last 7 or 10 years very charming and deeply interesting and valuable—and at the same time infinitely sad. Those of the Prati di Castello and the Tiber Bank and Stream especially so: instead of this lost beauty we have hideous jerry buildings, bad bridges, monotonous and colourless banks, and dull municipal mediocrity and common-place everywhere.

There might be a Weeping Wall in Rome as well as in Jerusalem. Truly enough there will soon be absolute truth in Bacon’s noble saying ‘The souls of the living are the beauty of the world’—for the world will be reduced to the sway of the plumber and builder, and artificial gardener and Bumbledom.

In evening wrote “Primo Sospiro di Primavera.”

8th. In forenoon wrote “The White Peacock” (56 lines)—a study in Whites for ThÉodore Roussel. Also “The Swimmer of Nemi” (Red and White) 42 lines. In evening revised the “Swimmer of Nemi” and partly rewrote or recast. It is much improved in definite effect; and gains by the deletion of 9 or 10 lines, pretty in themselves but not in perfect harmony. Wrote the poem commemorating the strange evening of 17th Jan.... called it “A Winter Evening” (35 lines). Later. Wrote the poem called “Scirocco” (June), 67 lines. To bed about 12.30.

10th. Gave first sitting to Charles Holroyd for his Etching of me.

11th. Gave Charles Holroyd a second sitting. Between 9 and 2 a.m. wrote

“The Naked Rider” (70 lines)
“The Wind at Fidenae” (38 lines)
“The Wild Mare” (32 lines)
“A Dream at Ardea” (In Maremma) 215 lines.

12th. Wrote “La Velia” (38 lines).

15th. Agnes and Lill, Charles Holroyd and the P—s and I went to Tusculum by morning train. Very warm as soon as we got to Frascati. Lovely Tramontana day. Took a donkey to carry the wine and provisions: or Lill, if necessary. After a long walk, lunched in the Theatre at Tusculum. Wreathed the donkey with ivy and some early blooms, and then I rode on it on to the stage, À la Bacchus, flasks of Frascati under either arm.

Most glorious sunset. The view from the height above Tusculum simply superb, and worth coming to see from any part of the world.

17th. Yesterday was one of the most glorious days possible in Rome. Cloudless sky: fresh sweet breeze: deliciously warm. Went with A. to Porto d’Anzio again, and walked along the coast northward. Sea unspeakably glorious: blue, sunlit, with great green foam-crested waves breaking on the sands, and surging in among the hollow tufa rocks and old Roman remains. Lay for a long time at the extreme end of the Arco Muto. One of the red letter days in one’s life.

Stayed up all night (till Breakfast) writing: then revising. Between 8 p.m. and 4 A.M. wrote poem after poem with unbroken eagerness. The impulse was an irresistible one, as I was tired and not, at first, strongly inclined to write, though no sooner had I written the Italian “Dedicatory Lines” than it all came upon me. In all, besides these, I wrote “Al Far della Notte” (31 lines): “Clouds, from the Agro Romano” (31): “The Olives of Tivoli” (30): “At Veii” (86): “The Bather” (68): “De Profundis” (26): and “Ultimo Sospiro” (37).

18th. Beautiful day. Felt none the worse for being up all night. Wrote article on Ibsen’s ‘Rosmersholm’ for Y. F. P. Wrote “Spuma dal Mare” (41 lines).

20th. In morning wrote out Dedicatory and other Preliminary Pages, etc., etc., for my “Sospiri di Roma” and after lunch took the complete MS. to Prof. Garlanda of the Societa Laziale, who will take them out to the Establishment at Tivoli to-day. Holroyd came with final proof of his etching of me.

24th. Wrote “The Shepherd in Rome” (66 lines).

25th. Wrote “Sorgendo La Luna” (47 ll.).

27th. Wrote poem “In July: on the Campagna” (26 ll.). Wrote poem “August Afternoon in Rome” (59 ll.).

You see I address you À la ProvenÇale already! We left Italy last week, and came to Provence. Marseilles, I admit, seemed to me an unattractive place after Rome—and indeed all of Provence we have seen as yet is somewhat chill and barren after Italy. No doubt the charm will grow. For one thing, Spring is very late here this year....

Arles we like much. It is a quaint and pleasant little town: and once I can get my mind free of those haunting hill-towns of the Sabines and Albans I love so much—(is there any hill range in the world to equal that swing of the Apennines stretching beyond Rome eastward, southward, and southwestward?)—I shall get to love it too, no doubt. But oh, Italy, Italy! Not Rome: though Rome has an infinite charm, even now when the jerry-builder is fast ruining it: but “greater Rome,” the Agro Romano! When I think of happy days at the Lake of Nemi, high up in the Albans, of Albano, and L’Ariccia, and Castel Gandolfo—of Tivoli, and the lonely Montecelli, and S. Polo dei Cavalieri, and Castel Madama, and Anticoli Corrado, etc., among the Sabines—of the ever new, mysterious, fascinating Campagna, from the Maremma on the North to the Pontine Marshes, my heart is full of longing. I love North Italy too, all Umbria and Tuscany: and to know Venice well is to have a secret of perpetual joy: and yet, the Agro Romano! How I wish you could have been there this winter and spring! You will find something of my passion for it, and of that still deeper longing and passion for the Beautiful, in my “Sospiri di Roma,” which ought to reach you before the end of April, or at any rate early in May. This very day it is being finally printed off to the sound of the Cascades of the Anio at Tivoli, in the Sabines—one of which turns the machinery of the SociÈta Laziale’s printing-works. I do hope the book will appeal to you, as there is so much of myself in it. No doubt it will be too frankly impressionistic to suit some people, and its unconventionality in form as well as in matter will be a cause of offence here and there. You shall have one of the earliest copies.

Yesterday was a fortunate day for arrival. It was a great festa, and all the women were out in their refined and picturesque costumes. The Amphitheatre was filled, tier upon tier, and full of colour (particularly owing to some three or four hundred Zouaves, grouped in threes or fours every here and there) for the occasion of “a grand Bull-Fight.” It was a brilliant and amusing scene, though (fortunately) the “fight” was of the most tame and harmless kind: much less dangerous even for the most unwary of the not very daring Arlesians than a walk across the remoter parts of the Campagna....

I have sent a card to the Grosvenor Club. I have much to say for the Sospiri, with some criticism. Impressionistic work where the heart is hot surpasses all but highest verse. When, mind. It can be of that heat only at intervals. In the ‘Wild Mare’ you have hit the mark. It is an unrivalled piece.

But you have at times (I read it so) insisted on your impressions. That is, you have put on your cap, sharpened your pencil, and gone afield as the Impressionistic poet. Come and hear more. I will give you a Crown and a bit of the whip—the smallest bit.

Give my warm regards to your wife.

... I know that you would revel in this glowing golden heat, and in the beautiful vinelands of the South. Southern Germany in the vintage season is something to remember with joy all one’s life. Yesterday it seemed as if the world above were one vast sea of deep blue wherever a great glowing wave of light straight from the heart of the sun was flowing joyously. I revel in this summer gorgeousness, and drink in the hot breath of the earth as though it were the breath of life. Words are useless to depict the splendour of colour everywhere—the glimmer of the golden-green of the vines, the immeasurable sunfilled flowers, the masses of ripening fruit of all kinds, the hues on the hill-slopes and in the valleys, on the houses and the quaint little vineyard-cots with their slanting red roofs. In the early afternoon I went up through the orchards and vineyards on the shoulder of the Hasenberg. It was a glory of colour. Nor have I ever seen such a lovely purple bloom among the green branches—like the sky of faerieland—as in the dark-plum orchards. There was one heavily laden tree which was superb in its massy richness of fruit: it was like a lovely vision of those thunder-clouds which come and go in July dawns. The bloom on the fruit was as though the west wind had been unable to go further and had let its velvety breath and wings fade away in a soft visible death or sleep. The only sounds were from the myriad bees and wasps and butterflies: some peasants singing in the valley as they trimmed the vines: and the just audible sussurrus of the wind among the highest pines on the Hasenberg. There was the fragrance of a myriad odours from fruit and flower and blossom and plant and tree and fructifying soil—with below all that strange smell as of the very body of the living breathing world. The festival of colour was everywhere. As I passed a cottar’s sloping bit of ground within his vineyards, I saw some cabbages high up among some trailing beans, which were of the purest and most delicate blue, lying there like azure wafts from the morning sky. Altogether I felt electrified in mind and body. The sunflood intoxicated me. But the beauty of the world is always bracing—all beauty is. I seemed to inhale it—to drink it in—to absorb it at every pore—to become it—to become the heart and soul within it. And then in the midst of it all came my old savage longing for a vagrant life: for freedom from the bondage we have involved ourselves in. I suppose I was a gipsy once—and before that “a wild man o’ the woods.”

A terrific thunderstorm has broken since I wrote the above. I have rarely if ever seen such continuous lightning. As it cleared, I saw a remarkably beautiful sight. In front of my window rose a low rainbow, and suddenly from the right there was slung a bright steel-blue bolt, seemingly hurled with intent right through the arch. The next moment the rainbow collapsed in a ruin of fading splendours....

I have had a very varied, and, to use a much abused word, a very romantic life in its external as well as in its internal aspects. Life is so unutterably precious that I cannot but rejoice daily that I am alive: and yet I have no fear of, or even regret at the thought of death.... There are many things far worse than death. When it comes, it comes. But meanwhile we are alive. The Death of the power to live is the only death to be dreaded....

Sunday 6th. Sept. 1891.—Blanche Willis Howard, or rather, the Frau Hof-Arzt Von Teuffel, arrived last night. She sent round word that she could conveniently receive me in the afternoon, but as it was not to have our first talk-over about our long projected joint novel, Elizabeth came with me so as to make Frau Von T.’s acquaintanceship.... She is a charming woman, and I like her better than ever. As I am here to write a novel in collaboration with her, and not to fall in love, I must be on guard against my too susceptible self....

Monday 7th.—At 3 o’clock I went to Frau Von Teuffel’s, and stayed till 5.45. We had a long talk, and skirmished admirably—sometimes “fluking” but ever and again taking our man: in other words, we gained what we were after, to some extent—indirectly as well as directly. She agrees to my proposal that we call the book A Fellowe and His Wife. The two chief personages are to be Germans of rank, from the RÜgen seaboard. I am to be the “faire wife,” and have decided to live at Rome, and to be a sculptor in ivory, and to have rooms in the Palazzo Malaspina. Have not yet decided about my name. My favourite German name is Hedwig, but Frau Von T. objected that English and American readers would pronounce it ‘Hed-wig.’ She suggested Edla: but that doesn’t ‘fetch’ me. I think Freyda (or perhaps Olga) would suit.

Tuesday, 8th.—This morning I began our novel A Fellowe and His Wife. I wrote some nine pages of MS. being the whole of the first letter written by Freia (or Ilse) from Rome.

Thursday, 10th.—In the evening I went round to MÔrike Strasse. We had a long talk about the book and its evolution, and ultimately decided to attempt the still more difficult task of telling the whole story in the letters of Odo and Ilse only. Of course this is much more difficult: but if we can do it, so much the more credit to our artistic skill and imaginative insight.... (It was also decided that Frau v. Teuffel should write Odo’s letters, and her collaborator, Ilse’s. In addition to the novel W. S. dramatised the story in a five-act play.)

1st October, 1891.—Wrote to-day the long first scene of Act III. of A Fellowe. In afternoon E. and I went out in the town. I bought Maurice Maeterlinck’s La Princesse Maleine and Les Aveugles, and in the late afternoon read right thro’ the latter and skimmed the former. Some one has been writing about him recently and comparing him to Webster. In method greatly, and in manner, and even in conceptive imagination, he differs from Webster: but he is his Cousin-German. It is certainly hopelessly uncritical to say as Octave Mirbeau did last year in a French paper or magazine that Maeterlinck is another Shakespeare. He is not even remotely Shakespearian. He is a writer of singular genius; and I shall send for everything he has written. Reading these things of his excited me to a high degree. It was the electric touch I needed to produce my Dramatic Interludes over which I have been brooding. I believe that much of the imaginative writing of the future will be in dramatic prose of a special kind....

Friday, 2nd.—I went to bed last night haunted by my story “The Summons.” To-day at 10.30 or nearer 11 I began to write it, and wrote without a break till 5.30, by which time “A Northern Night,” as I now call it, was entirely finished, ‘asides’ and all. Both there and when I issue the Dramatic Interludes (five in all) I shall send them forth under my anagram, H. P. SiwÄarmill. The volume will be a small one. The longest pieces will be the “Northern Night,” and “The Experiment of Melchior van HoËk”: the others will be “The Confessor,” “The Birth of a Soul” and “The Black Madonna.”

Saturday 3rd.—... This late afternoon wrote the Dramatic Study, “The Birth of a Soul.” Though not ‘picturesque’ it touches a deeper note than “A Northern Night,” and so is really the more impressive.

Tuesday, 6th.—... P. S. After writing this Entry for Tuesday, shortly before 12, I began to write the opening particulars of Scene II. of Act IV., and went on till I finished the whole scene, shortly before 2 A.M.

Wednesday, 7th. Finished before 1 A.M. my Play, A Fellowe, by writing the longish Scene III. of Act IV. Went out with Lill in the afternoon. The town all draped in black for the death of the King of Saxony. Wrote to Frank Harris (from here, as H. P. SiwÄarmill) with “The Birth of a Soul.” ...

Friday, 9th.—In late evening thought out (but only so far as leading lines and general drift) the drama “The Gipsy-Christ.” (Being The Passion of Manuel van HoËk)....