nd her city from destruction. And when the sad
pursuing constellations came to know and realize the bitter sorrow that
was come upon them--note this idea--their hearts broke and their tears
gushed forth, filling the vault of heaven with a fiery splendor, for
those tears were falling stars. It was a rash idea, but beautiful;
beautiful and pathetic; wonderfully pathetic, the way I had it, with
the rhyme and all to help. At the end of each verse there was a two-line
refrain pitying the poor earthly lover separated so far, and perhaps
forever, from her he loved so well, and growing always paler and weaker
and thinner in his agony as he neared the cruel grave--the most touching
thing--even the boys themselves could hardly keep back their tears, the
way Noel said those lines. There were eight four-line stanzas in the
first end of the poem--the end about the rose, the horticultural end, as
you may say, if that is not too large a name for such a little poem--and
eight in the astronomical end--sixteen stanzas altogether, and I could
have made it a hundred and fifty if I had wanted to, I was so inspired
and so all swelled up with beautiful thoughts and fancies; but that
would have been too many to sing or recite before a company that way,
whereas sixteen was just right, and could be done over again if desired.
The boys were amazed that I could make such a poem as that out of my own
head, and so was I, of course, it being as much a surprise to me as it
could be to anybody, for I did not know that it was in me. If any had
asked me a single day before if it was in me, I should have told them
frankly no, it was not.

That is the way with us; we may go on half of our life not knowing such
a thing is in us, when in reality it was there all the time, and all we
needed was something to turn up that would call for it. Indeed, it was
always so without family. My grandfather had a cancer, and they never
knew what was the matter with him till he died, and he didn't know
himself. It is wonderful how gifts and diseases can be concealed in that
way. All that was necessary in my case was for this lovely and inspiring
girl to cross my path, and out came the poem, and no more trouble to me
to word it and rhyme it and perfect it than it is to stone a dog. No, I
should have said it was not in me; but it was.

The boys couldn't say enough about it, they were so charmed and
astonished. The thing that pleased them the most was the way it would do
the