Gracioso!

"It was only a dream on the throbbing strings,
An echo of Nature in phantasy wrought,
A breath of her breath and a touch of her wings
From a kingdom outspread in the regions of thought.
Below rolled the sound of the city's din,
And the fading day, as the night drew in,
Showed the quaint old face and the pointed chin,
And the arm that was raised o'er the violin,
As the old man whispered his hope's dead tale,
To the friend who could comfort, though others might fail,
And the chords stole hushed and low.
Pianissimo!"

He stopped, and the sheet of paper fell from his hands.

"Well," she said, with all the eagerness of a new-born writer, "tell
me, do you think them _very_ bad?"

"Well, Angela, you know----"

"Ah! go on now; I am ready to be crushed. Pray don't spare my
feelings."

"I was about to say that, thanks be to Providence, I am not a critic;
but I think----"

"Oh! yes, let me hear what you think. You are speaking so slowly, in
order to get time to invent something extra cutting. Well, I deserve
it."

"Don't interrupt; I was going to say that I think the piece above the
average of second-class poetry, and that a few of the lines touch the
first-class standard. You have caught something of the 'divine
afflatus' that the drunken old fellow said he could not cage. But I do
not think that you will ever be popular as a writer of verses if you
keep to that style; I doubt if there is a magazine in the kingdom that
would take those lines unless they were by a known writer. They would
return them marked, 'Good, but too vague for the general public.'
Magazine editors don't like lines from 'a kingdom outspread in the
regions of thought,' for, as they say, such poems are apt to excite
vagueness in the brains of that dim entity, the 'general public.' What
they do like are commonplace ideas, put in pretty language, and
sweetened with sentimentality or emotional religious feelings, such as
the thinking powers of their subscribers are competent to absorb
without mental strain, and without leaving their accustomed channels.
To be popular it is necessary to be commonplace, or at the least to
describe the commonplace, to work in a well-worn groove, and not to
startle--requirements which, unfortunately, simple as they seem, very
few persons possess the ar