"
"I had come," he there says, "to look upon my indwelling poetic talent
altogether as a force of nature; the more so as I had always been
compelled to regard outward nature as its proper object. The exercise
of this poetic faculty might indeed be excited and determined by
circumstances; but its most joyful and richest action was
spontaneous--even involuntary. In my nightly vigils the same thing
happened; so that I often wished, like one of my predecessors, to have
a leathern jerkin made, and to get accustomed to writing in the dark,
so as to be able to fix on paper all such unpremeditated effusions. It
had so often happened to me that, after composing some snatch of
poetry in my head, I could not recall it, that I would now hurry to my
desk and, without once breaking off, write off the poem from beginning
to end, not even taking time to straighten the paper, if it lay
crosswise, so that the verses often slanted across the page. In such a
mood I preferred to get hold of a lead pencil, because I could write
most readily with it; whereas the scratching and spluttering of a pen
would sometimes wake me from a poetic dream, confuse me, and so stifle
some trifling production in its birth.
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