Famous Single Poems
at which to sit down and fold one’s hands and wait—at least to an American. To an Arab or a Hindu it would doubtless appeal as the wisest course of all; certainly it is the course recommended by all their saints and prophets—to devote oneself to contemplation in order to win through to that high serenity where the world and its stings seem petty and far away, to that Nirvana which is the supremest good the gods bestow on man.
As a matter of fact, that is exactly what Burroughs did, in so far as circumstance and environment permitted, and he seems to have been fairly successful in winning for himself a placid and happy life, with no great excitements, to be sure, no high and passionate experiences, but also with no greater annoyances than an occasional lack of money and a wife with a mania for cleaning house. Both of these irritations he escaped in his later years, for his writings brought him an income adequate to his simple needs, and he evaded his wife by building himself a cabin in the woods where, with an utter disregard of the neighborhood gossip, he could live by himself and be as untidy as he pleased.
The poem did, then, in a way, voice his inner convictions, though he himself points out that it was not so much the outgrowth of any spiritual experience or reasoned philosophy as of
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