Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/150

138 "Nothing very much, lately. It has been a barren time," confessed Iredell wearily. "The ideas hover but they are vague, formless, they will not take the classical shape. Since I saw you last, dear lady, I have done only one little sonnet."

"I should so love to hear it!" breathed Mrs. Carlson. "Didn't you bring it with you? You know I will never forgive you, if you did not!"

Mr. Iredell admitted that he just happened to have a copy with him; and, on further urging, he pulled it from his pocket. A wild wayward thought swooped across Kenneth's mind, causing him to choke in his soup. According to Iredell's own argument poetry was too sacred for anybody but Shakespeare and Dante; here was Iredell himself preparing to read an original poem—ergo? He glanced about for sympathy in this thought, but met only surprise and question

It was a silly thought He listened to Iredell's sonnet and was tremendously impressed. Indeed, he thought it quite one of the best things he had ever heard, and his opinion for Iredell grew to a vast respect and admiration. Kenneth was not one of those to whom writing of any kind comes easy, though he read much. He was young. Iredell's poem was a good journeyman poem built according to specifications that never fail to bring results. Its scansion and rhymes were conventionally perfect: and Iredell could read with effect. Its base was a commonplace platitude of morality in Greek dress, and it contained a number of polysyllabic, unusual and exceedingly melodious words. The effect on Kenneth was of a great piece of work.

Delmore, who had listened attentively, his head on one side, pounced upon a detail of quantities of a transposed Greek word offering a substitute. Everybody agreed that the meanings were sufficiently alike, but the connotations!! Kenneth, beyond his depth, caught at an understandable straw: he remembered that Longfellow had used that same word somewhere, and said so. This remark produced a flat silence.

"Still Longfellow has done some good lines," said Mrs. Carlson, after a moment.

They settled the point only by abandoning it to pursue a