Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/117



HE month was June, the street was Gower Street, the room was an attic. And in it a poet sat, struggling with the rebellious third act of the poetic drama that was to set him in the immediate shadow of Shakespeare, and on the level of those who ring Parnassus round just below the summit. The attic roof sloped, the furniture was vilely painted in grained yellow, the arm-chair's prickly horsehair had broken to let loose lumps of dark-coloured flock. The curtains were dark and damask and dusty. The carpet was Kidderminster and sand-coloured. It had holes in it; so had the Dutch hearthrug. The poet's penholder was the kind at twopence the dozen. The ink was in a penny bottle. Outside on a blackened flowerless lilac a strayed thrush sang madly of spring and hope and joy and love.