ind is up, and see a
light fleece of smoke coming from a chimney top, I think that down below
someone is listening to music that he likes, and that his thoughts ride
upon the night, like those white streamers of smoke. And then I think of
castles and mountains and high places and the sounds of storm. Or in fancy
I see a tower that tapers to the moon with a silver gleam upon it."

The strange boy lay back and laughed. "Musicians think that they are the
only ones that can hear the finer sounds. If one of us common fellows cocks
his ear, they think that only the coarser thumps get inside. And artists
think that they alone know the glory of color. I was thinking of that, this
afternoon. And yet I have walked under the blue sky. I have seen twilights
that these men of paint would botch on canvas. But both musicians and
artists have a vision that is greater than their product. The soul of a man
can hardly be recorded in black and white keys. Nor can a little pigment
which you rub upon your thumb be the measure of an artist. So I suppose
that is the way also with poets. It is not to be expected that they can
express themselves fully in words that they have borrowed from the kitchen.
When their genius flames up, it is only the lesser sparks that fall upon
their writing pads. It consoles me that a man should be greater than his
achievement. I who have done so little would otherwise be so forlorn."

"It's odd," I said, when he had fallen into silence, "that I used to feel
exactly as you do. It stirs an old recollection. If I am not mistaken, I
once wrote a paper on the subject."

The boy smiled dreamily. "But if small persons like myself," he began, "can
have such frenzies, how must it be with those greater persons who have
amazed the world? I have wondered in what kind of exaltation Shakespeare
wrote his storm in 'Lear.' There must have been a first conception greater
even than his accomplishment. Did he look from his windows at a winter
tempest and see miserable old men and women running hard for shelter? Did
a flash of lightning bare his soul to the misery, the betrayal and the
madness of the world? His supreme moment was not when he flung the
completed manuscript aside, or when he heard the actors mouth his lines,
but in the flash and throb of creation--in the moment when he knew that he
had the power in him to write 'Lear.' What we read is the cold forging,
wonderful and enduring, but not to be compared to the producing furn