The Atlantic Monthly | Page 7

me introduce Mr. Hopkins, my friend, the poet I've written to you about. He was just reading two of his poems to me. Some other time, Gifted--Mr. Hopkins."
"O no, Mr. Hopkins,--pray go on," said Clement. "I'm very fond of poetry."
The poet did not require much urging, and began at once reciting over again the stanzas which were afterwards so much admired in the "Banner and Oracle,"--the first verse being, as the readers of that paper will remember,--
"She moves in splendor, like the ray That flashes from unclouded skies, And all the charms of night and day Are mingled in her hair and eyes."
Clement, who must have been in an agony of impatience to be alone with his beloved, commanded his feelings admirably. He signified his approbation of the poem by saying that the lines were smooth and the rhymes absolutely without blemish. The stanzas reminded him forcibly of one of the greatest poets of the century.
Gifted flushed hot with pleasure. He had tasted the blood of his own rhymes; and when a poet gets as far as that, it is like wringing the bag of exhilarating gas from the lips of a fellow sucking at it, to drag his piece away from him.
"Perhaps you will like these lines still better," he said; "the style is more modern:--
'O daughter of the spic��d South, Her bubbly grapes have spilled the wine That staineth with its hue divine The red flower of thy perfect mouth.'"
And so on, through a series of stanzas like these, with the pulp of two rhymes between the upper and lower crust of two others.
Clement was cornered. It was necessary to say something for the poet's sake,--perhaps for Susan's; for she was in a certain sense responsible for the poems of a youth of genius, of whom she had spoken so often and so enthusiastically.
"Very good, Mr. Hopkins, and a form of verse little used, I should think, until of late years. You modelled this piece on the style of a famous living English poet, did you not?"
"Indeed I did not, Mr. Lindsay,--I never imitate. Originality is, if I may be allowed to say so much for myself, my peculiar forte. Why, the critics allow as much as that. See here, Mr. Lindsay."
Mr. Gifted Hopkins pulled out his pocket-book, and, taking therefrom a cutting from a newspaper,--which dropped helplessly open of itself, as if tired of the process, being very tender in the joints or creases, by reason of having been often folded and unfolded,--read aloud as follows:--
"The bard of Oxbow Village--our valued correspondent who writes over the signature of G. H.--is, in our opinion, more remarkable for his originality than for any other of his numerous gifts."
Clement was apparently silenced by this, and the poet a little elated with a sense of triumph. Susan could not help sharing his feeling of satisfaction, and without meaning it in the least, nay, without knowing it, for she was as simple and pure as new milk, edged a little bit--the merest infinitesimal atom--nearer to Gifted Hopkins, who was on one side of her, while Clement walked on the other. Women love the conquering party,--it is the way of their sex. And poets, as we have seen, are wellnigh irresistible when they exert their dangerous power of fascination upon the female heart. But Clement was above jealousy; and, if he perceived anything of this movement, took no notice of it.
He saw a good deal of his pretty Susan that day. She was tender in her expressions and manners as usual, but there was a little something in her looks and language from time to time that Clement did not know exactly what to make of. She colored once or twice when the young poet's name was mentioned. She was not so full of her little plans for the future as she had sometimes been, "everything was so uncertain," she said. Clement asked himself whether she felt quite as sure that her attachment would last as she once did. But there were no reproaches, not even any explanations, which are about as bad between lovers. There was nothing but an undefined feeling on his side that she did not cling quite so closely to him, perhaps, as he had once thought, and that, if he had happened to have been drowned that day when he went down with the beautiful young woman, it was just conceivable that Susan, who would have cried dreadfully, no doubt, would in time have listened to consolation from some other young man,--possibly from the young poet whose verses he had been admiring. Easy-crying widows take new husbands soonest; there is nothing like wet weather for transplanting, as Master Gridley used to say. Susan had a fluent natural gift for tears, as Clement well knew, after the exercise of