reeing
with him about this great flood of "poetry," as it calls itself, and
looking at the rhyming mania much as he does.

How I do love real poetry! That is the reason hate rhymes which have not
a particle of it in them. The foolish scribblers that deal in them are
like bad workmen in a carpenter's shop. They not only turn out bad jobs
of work, but they spoil the tools for better workmen. There is hardly a
pair of rhymes in the English language that is not so dulled and hacked
and gapped by these 'prentice hands that a master of the craft hates to
touch them, and yet he cannot very well do without them. I have not been
besieged as the old Professor has been with such multitudes of
would-be-poetical aspirants that he could not even read their
manuscripts, but I have had a good many letters containing verses, and I
have warned the writers of the delusion under which they were laboring.

You may like to know that I have just been translating some extracts from
the Greek Anthology. I send you a few specimens of my work, with a
Dedication to the Shade of Sappho. I hope you will find something of the
Greek rhythm in my versions, and that I have caught a spark of
inspiration from the impassioned Lesbian. I have found great delight in
this work, at any rate, and am never so happy as when I read from my
manuscript or repeat from memory the lines into which I have transferred
the thought of the men and women of two thousand years ago, or given
rhythmical expression to my own rapturous feelings with regard to them.
I must read you my Dedication to the Shade of Sappho. I cannot help
thinking that you will like it better than either of my last two, The
Song of the Roses, or The Wail of the Weeds.

How I do miss you, dearest! I want you: I want you to listen to what I
have written; I want you to hear all about my plans for the future; I
want to look at you, and think how grand it must be to feel one's self to
be such a noble and beautiful-creature; I want to wander in the woods
with you, to float on the lake, to share your life and talk over every
day's doings with you. Alas! I feel that we have parted as two friends
part at a port of embarkation: they embrace, they kiss each other's
cheeks, they cover their faces and weep, they try to speak good-by to
each other, they watch from the pier and from the deck; the two forms
grow less and less, fainter and fainter in the distance, two white
handkerchiefs flutter once and again, and ye