A Soliloquy
To stop, and write no more; ay, there’s the scrape, for in that lack of prose what tales aren’t told.
To write or not to write, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis braver for the bard to suffer
The whims and wills of publishers’ fortunes,
Or to break nibs across great reams of paper
And by ink-spilling, soil them: to cease, to stop,
No more; and by a stop to say we end
The drying and the thousand numbing blocks
That writing’s heir to? ‘Tis a book’s conclusion
Most surely to desire. To cease, to stop,
To stop, and write no more; ay, there’s the scrape,
For in that lack of prose what tales aren’t told
When left unfilled are endless quires,
Must make us think. There’s the problem
To make a mockery of the Muses:
For who would stand the trials and traps of speech,
The proofer’s marks, the critic’s insult,
The pain of unknown genius, the advance’s delay,
The ignorance of bean-counters, and the scorn
A wordsmith suffers from those who can’t create,
When they alone might end their career
By erasing? Who would author great ideas,
To fret and toil at their thankless keyboard,
But for the fear of where their memoir goes,
The unexplored library whose shelves
No visitor can see, sharpens the quill,
And makes us sooner face the mocking page
Than leave without an epilogue?
Thus ego does make doubters of us all,
And thus the innate wish to share our insight
Is stifled by such margined lines of doubt,
And magna opera of such worth and substance,
When faced like this, are left unwritten
And motivation’s lost.
THELIFTEDVEIL
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