VI
THE POET AND THE PEASANT
THE other day a poet friend of mine, who has lived in close communion with nature all his life, wrote a poem and took it to an editor.
It was a living pastoral, full of the genuine breath of the fields, the song of birds, and the pleasant chatter of trickling streams.
When the poet called again to see about it, with hopes of a beefsteak dinner in his heart, it was handed back to him with the comment:
“Too artificial.”
Several of us met over spaghetti and Dutchess County chianti, and swallowed indignation with the slippery forkfuls.
And there we dug a pit for the editor. With us was Conant, a well-arrived writer of fiction—a man who had trod on asphalt all his life, and who had never looked upon bucolic scenes except with sensations of disgust from the windows of express trains.
Conant wrote a poem and called it “The Doe and the Brook.” It was a fine specimen of the kind of work you would expect from a poet who had strayed with Amaryl-
