Letters to a Young Poet

And even if you were in some prison the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses--would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories? Turn your attention thither. Try to raise the submerged sensations of that ample past; your personality will grow more firm, your solitude will widen and will become a dusky dwelling past which the noise of others goes by far away. And if out of this turning inward, out of this absorption into your own world verses come then it will not occur to you to ask anyone whether they are good verses.