Waiting
dropped the sixth stanza from “Waiting” has never been discovered, but it was probably cut out not by a Mr. Bowdler but by some intelligent critic. It is far more reasonable to suppose that it was dropped, not because of any squeamishness, but because, as any one can see, it is distinctly inferior to the remainder of the poem. Burroughs was quite right in saying that the poem is stronger without it.
Also, it is entirely contrary to the facts of life, as another correspondent in the Times subsequently pointed out. “Maidens are not in the habit of looking unkindly on the lovers who seek them,” she observes, quite justly, “unless there are good reasons!” Indeed, the complaint of the moralists has always been that maidens, all too often, are far kinder than they should be!
Nowhere in his talks does Burroughs make any reference to the fact that he subsequently wrote a concluding stanza to the poem, which perhaps sums up the philosophy of his later life:
The law of love threads every heart
And knits it to its utmost kin,
Nor can our lives flow long apart
From souls our secret souls would win.
This stanza has fortunately been preserved by Mrs. Alice Cleary Sutcliffe. “Several years
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