ould set the
world right, as Amphion's harp set the stones building themselves.... Am
I justified in saying that you merely upset my beliefs, without helping
me to build up any; yes, even when I am striving after that religion of
right doing which you nominally call yours--?"

"You always rush to extremes, Cyril. If you would listen to, or read, my
words without letting your mind whirl off while so doing--"

"I listen to you far too much, Baldwin," interrupted Cyril, who would
not break the thread of his own ideas; "and first I want to read you a
sonnet."

Baldwin burst out laughing. "A sonnet! one of those burnt at Dresden--or
written in commemoration of your decision to write no more?"

"It is not by me at all, so there's an end to your amusement. I want you
to hear it because it embodies, and very nobly, what I have felt. I have
never even seen the author, and know nothing about her except that she
is a woman."

"A woman!" and Baldwin's tone was disagreeably expressive.

"I know you don't believe in women poets or women artists."

"Not much, so far, excepting Sappho and Mrs. Browning, certainly. But,
come, let's hear the sonnet. I do abominate women's verses, I confess;
but there are such multitudes of poetesses that Nature may sometimes
blunder in their production, and make one of them of the stuff intended
for a poet."

"Well then, listen," and Cyril drew a notebook from his pocket, and read
as follows:--

"God sent a poet to reform His earth
But when he came and found it cold and poor
Harsh and unlovely, where each prosperous boor
Held poets light for all their heavenly birth,
He thought--Myself can make one better worth
The living in than this--full of old lore,
Music and light and love, where saints adore
And angels, all within mine own soul's girth.
But when at last he came to die, his soul
Saw Earth (flying past to Heaven) with new love,
And all the unused passion in him cried:
'O God, your Heaven I know and weary of,
Give me this world to work in and make whole.'
God spoke: 'Therein, fool, thou hast lived and died.'"

Cyril paused for a moment. "Do you understand, Baldwin, how that
expresses my state of feeling?" he then asked.

"I do," answered the other, "and I understand that both you and the
author of the sonnet seem not to have understood in what manner God
intended that poets should improve the earth. And here I return to my
former remark, that