Memorie and Rime Author:Joaquin Miller Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: COWLEY HOUSE, COWLEY STREET, WESTMINSTER. February 14, '71. From Mile End to old Westminster ! I am right back of the Abbey. From my garret window I can see t... more »he Virginia creepeis, which they say were planted by Queen Elizabeth. The walls are high ; but this garret of mine is still higher. They call it the poet Cowley's house. As if any poet ever had money enough to build so big a house, or ever had such bad taste as to build such an ugly one. I hear all the bells of Westminster here, and of Parliament, big Ben, and all. And I hear perpetual pounding and hammering about the Abbey—all the time building or repairing. Not a good place to sleep or to rest, 0 immortal poets ! Such an eternal pounding and pecking of stones and rasping of trowels and mortar no one ever heard. I had rather rest in Oregon, Where the plants are as trees ; where the trees are as towers That toy, as it seems, with the stars at night ; Where the roses are forests ; where the wild-wood flowers Are dense unto darkness ; where, reaching for light, They spill in your bosom their fragrance in showers Like incense spilled down in some sacrament rite. HUNTING FOR A PUBLISHER. February 27, '71. I have nearly given up this journal to get out a book. I wanted to publish a great drama called " Oregonia," but finally wrote an easy-going little thing which I called "Arizonian," and put the two together, and called the little book " Pacific Poems." It has been ready for the printer a long time. But here one cannot get a publisher at all unless one pays for it. And my money is out, my watch at my Uncle Rothschild's, and I have nothing to pay with. Mybrother is slow about sending me money. I am so afraid he is seriously ill. But the book must come out, if I even have to publish it without a publisher ! ...« less