Excerpt from The Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller And when your great poet comes, as he surely will and soon, do not mock because he goes apart from folly or trade to meditate. Ever from the first the prophets went up into the mountains to pray. A poet need.not be eccentric to turn apart from getting and getting. In truth he would be no real poet if he did not. A good poet need not be a bad man. He may not be a better man than yourself, but he is not necessarily worse for being a poet. I repeat, he is merely a plain, sincere human being in love with the beautiful world and all that is His. Byron, in a letter to Moore, says, The night to me has been everything. In another he says, I read Spenser half the time, as I write Childe Harold, in order to keep the measure and melody in my brain. Burns says, I keep as many as half a dozen poems maturing in my mind at the same time, and write them down when matured and I find time. These and like little side lights from other great poets have done me so much good that I have decided to tell by way of foot notes as we go forward so much of my own methods of work as may possibly light the path of some discouraged Keats of coming days. For the greater the poeta the greater his sensibility, and the greater the sensibility the greater his sufferings in the somber foothill forests of Parnassus. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.