of the hungry world?—you in your New Moon seclusion of old trees and old maids—but it is hungry. Ode to Winter—the seasons are a sort of disease all young poets must have, it seems—ha! ‘Spring will not forget’—that’s a good line—the only good line in it. H’m’m—Wanderings—
‘I’ve learned the secret of the rune
That the somber pines on the hillside croon’—
Have you—have you learned that secret?”
“I think I’ve always known it,” said Emily dreamily. That flash of unimaginable sweetness that sometimes surprised her had just come and gone.
“Aim and Endeavour—too didactic—too didactic. You’ve no right to try to teach until you’re old—and then you won’t want to—
‘Her face was like a star all pale and fair’—
Were you looking in the glass when you composed that line?”
“No—” indignantly.
“‘When the morning light is shaken like a banner on the hill’—a good line—a good line—
‘Oh, on such a golden morning
To be living is delight’—
Too much like a faint echo of Wordsworth. The Sea in September—‘blue and austerely bright’—‘austerely bright’—child, how can you marry the right adjectives like that? Morning—‘all the secret fears that haunt the night’—what do you know of the fears that haunt the night?”
“I know something,” said Emily decidedly, remembering her first night at Wyther Grange.
“To a Dead Day—
