"Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odor from Dreamland sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a splendor that came and went,
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere,
Of memories that stay not and go not,
Like music heard once by an ear
That cannot forget or reclaim it,
A something so shy, it would shame it
To make it a show,
A something too vague, could I name it,
For others to know,
As if I had lived it or dreamed it,
As if I had acted or schemed it,
Long ago!"

"And the last verse, father. I like the last best," cried Betty,
suddenly.

"Why, my deary. I thought you were gone to bed."

"No, mother lets me sit up a little while longer when you're reading.
I like to hear you." And he read for her the last verse:--

"And yet, could I live it over,
This life that stirs my brain,
Could I be both maiden and lover,
Moon and tide, bee and clover,
As I seem to have been, once again,
Could I but speak it and show it,
This pleasure more sharp than pain,
That baffles and lures me so,
The world should once more have a poet,
Such as it had
In the ages glad,
Long ago!"

Then, wishing to know more of the secret springs of his little
daughter's life, he asked: "Why do you love that stanza best, Betty,
my dear?"

Betty blushed crimson to the roots of her hair, for what she carried
in her heart was too precious to tell, but she meant to be a poet.
Even then, in the pocket of her calico dress lay a little book and a
stubbed lead pencil, and in the book was already the beginning of her
great epic. Her father had said the epic was a thing of the past, that
in the future none would be written, for that it was a form of
expressions that belonged to the world's youth, and that age brought
philosophy and introspection, but not epics.

She meant to surprise her father some day with this poem. The great
world was so full of mystery--of seductive beauty and terror and of
strange, enticing charm! She saw and felt i