n a gasp and a great jump of the heart,--then a sudden flush and
a beating in the vessels of the head,--then a long sigh,--and the
poem is written.

It is an impromptu, I suppose, then, if you write it so suddenly,
--I replied.

No,--said he,--far from it. I said written, but I did not say
COPIED. Every such poem has a soul and a body, and it is the body
of it, or the copy, that men read and publishers pay for. The soul
of it is born in an instant in the poet's soul. It comes to him a
thought, tangled in the meshes of a few sweet words,--words that
have loved each other from the cradle of the language, but have
never been wedded until now. Whether it will ever fully embody
itself in a bridal train of a dozen stanzas or not is uncertain;
but it exists potentially from the instant that the poet turns pale
with it. It is enough to stun and scare anybody, to have a hot
thought come crashing into his brain, and ploughing up those
parallel ruts where the wagon trains of common ideas were jogging
along in their regular sequences of association. No wonder the
ancients made the poetical impulse wholly external. [Greek text
which cannot be reproduced]. Goddess,--Muse,--divine afflatus,
--something outside always. _I_ never wrote any verses worth
reading. I can't. I am too stupid. If I ever copied any that
were worth reading, I was only a medium.

[I was talking all this time to our boarders, you understand,
--telling them what this poet told me. The company listened rather
attentively, I thought, considering the literary character of the
remarks.]

The old gentleman opposite all at once asked me if I ever read
anything better than Pope's "Essay on Man"? Had I ever perused
McFingal? He was fond of poetry when he was a boy,--his mother
taught him to say many little pieces,--he remembered one beautiful
hymn;--and the old gentleman began, in a clear, loud voice, for his
years,--

"The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens,"--

He stopped, as if startled by our silence, and a faint flush ran up
beneath the thin white hairs that fell upon his cheek. As I looked
round, I was reminded of a show I once saw at the Museum,--the
Sleeping Beauty, I think they called it. The old man's sudden
breaking out in this way turned every face towards him, and each
kept his posture as if changed to stone. Our Celtic Bridget, or
Biddy, is not a foolish fat scullion to burst out