Every poet, in my opinion, ought to do as Professor
A. E. Housman has just done, and tell us how he wrote his poetry. The philosophers might avoid a lot of wasteful speculation if they had before them the actual evidence of all the poets as to how the thing was done. "I know how this stuff came.into existence," says Professor Hous- man, speaking of his own poems. It was "less an active than a passive and involuntary process." It would "flow into" or "bubble up " in his mind," with sudden and unaccountable emotion,' :a line or a stanza at a time, "accompanied, not preceded, by a vague notion" of the whole poem. This is near -to the account which Words- worth gave of himself. It differs somewhat from that of Shelley, for wham the ecstasy of the first impression was already like a "fading ember" when he arrived at com- position. The process is poles asunder from that of Dante, for whom composition was a continuous and painful toil. Professor Housman does not quite satisfy me that, had he been willing to bring more pressure to bear on himself, he might not have forced to "bubble up," from that rich " secretion " within him, more than the two slender volumes, The Shropshire Lad and Last Poems, which he has been content to give to the world.
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