XXXIN FOR A PENNY IN FOR A POUND
THERE was once a beautiful line of poetry who had by an unfortunate accident lodged herself in the brain of an extremely inferior poet. To her great discomfort the line found herself driven to associate with a disorderly mob of worn-out and shabby phrases. Nor was this all. While her companions were for ever being taken out and aired, and on occasion finding their way into the public prints, she remained neglected and disused.
The other lines, who had from the first disliked her, now, not unnaturally, added contempt to their dislike. “The truth is,” they said to her, “that you are not one of us. The rest of us can all point to a long and distinguished ancestry. Everybody knew our parents and knows us. We are welcome wherever we go, and are readily admitted into the best society. But as for you, your birth is wrapt in mystery. Whether it is the fact that the poet is your father is open to question,but at any rate there is no question whatever of the character of the Greek woman your mother. You had better,” they would conclude, “return whence you came, where, among persons of your own kind, you will no doubt be at ease.”
The poet, meanwhile, only dimly aware of his golden visitor, continued to fumble among his ready-for-service shelves. This was the easier for him as all his ideas were of stock size, and were in consequence easily fitted by the poetic slops. But as time went on the poet became more and more acutely aware of something that waited expression—some queer new-shaped Jack o’ lanthorn of a thought that none of his ready-made suits would fit. One after another he took them down, and they seemed incorrigibly stale and shop-soiled. Even the most daring patterns in the earlier Brooke design seemed inadequate, out at the seams and unfresh.
He blamed his liver. Then he blamed his wife, and last—most horrible thought of all—he blamed his inspiration. “I have written myself out,” he cried to the pool of light that the lamp cast on his solitary desk. “This is the end.” He rehearsed in a high tragic voicesome of his most notable triumphs, as for example:
“Now that the roses are overAnd the last white rose is dead,Quiet returns to the loverInstead....“Instead of love freely givenTo love that asked for no price,Instead of a boy in HeavenAnd a girl in Paradise,“Now that the roses are overAnd the last white rose is dead,Quiet returns to the loverInstead.
“Now that the roses are overAnd the last white rose is dead,Quiet returns to the loverInstead....“Instead of love freely givenTo love that asked for no price,Instead of a boy in HeavenAnd a girl in Paradise,“Now that the roses are overAnd the last white rose is dead,Quiet returns to the loverInstead.
“Now that the roses are overAnd the last white rose is dead,Quiet returns to the loverInstead....
“Now that the roses are over
And the last white rose is dead,
Quiet returns to the lover
Instead....
“Instead of love freely givenTo love that asked for no price,Instead of a boy in HeavenAnd a girl in Paradise,
“Instead of love freely given
To love that asked for no price,
Instead of a boy in Heaven
And a girl in Paradise,
“Now that the roses are overAnd the last white rose is dead,Quiet returns to the loverInstead.
“Now that the roses are over
And the last white rose is dead,
Quiet returns to the lover
Instead.
“My God!” he cried to the unreceptive almond blossoms on the wall-paper. “What genius I had when I wrote that.”
He sat down at the desk and looked severely at the virgin page. No neat rhymes again, no passion tied up in brown paper and looped with string for a finger, no beauty sent home with the first delivery. “This,” he repeated with melancholy grandeur, “is the end.”
And at that directly minute he saw a line form itself in letters of flame along the page, as though a candle wrote it—a lovely line with the sovereign note of Cleopatra’s cry:
“O infinite virtue, comest thou smiling from the world’s great snare uncaught?”
For one wild moment his spirit, overlaid with swathe upon swathe of rubbish, moved upwards to the light. For whatever he was now, he had once been a poet, if only in his hopes. In that luminous instant he almost guessed his failure. “The end,” he muttered; “suppose it were the beginning?” With that the old lines that had suffered defeat resumed their empire. “Yes, the beginning,” he cried, “the beginning,” and radiant he began to write, sure of his inspiration:
“It’s the call of love: ‘Oh followwhere my golden footsteps tread!’But the call of love is hollowby the calling of the dead.”
“It’s the call of love: ‘Oh followwhere my golden footsteps tread!’But the call of love is hollowby the calling of the dead.”
“It’s the call of love: ‘Oh follow
where my golden footsteps tread!’
But the call of love is hollow
by the calling of the dead.”
So, with head bent, he continued writing through the night. And while he wrote theother lines turned upon the bastard and drove her into the dark.
“What a beautiful poem,” said the editor of his favourite journal when it was sent to him. “Not so bad,” said the poet modestly. “The fact is, it all started with a line—a direct inspiration.” “What was it?” inquired the editor languidly. “Well, to be perfectly honest,” replied the poet, “I’ve forgotten it.”