When the verse-maker had done, he did not pause for approbation, nor look modestly down, as do most people who recite their own verses, but unaffectedly thinking much more of his art than his audience, hurried on somewhat disconsolately,—
“I see with great grief that I am better at sketching than rhyming. Can you” (appealing to Kenelm) “even comprehend what I mean by the verses?”
KENELM.—“Do you comprehend, Tom?”
TOM (in a whisper).—“No.”
KENELM.—“I presume that by his flower-girl our friend means to represent not only poetry, but a poetry like his own, which is not at all the sort of poetry now in fashion. I, however, expand his meaning, and by his flower-girl I understand any image of natural truth or beauty for which, when we are living the artificial life of crowded streets, we are too busy to give a penny.”
“Take it as you please,” said the minstrel, smiling and sighing at the same time; “but I have not expressed in words that which I did mean half so well as I have expressed it in my sketch-book.”
“Ah! and how?” asked Kenelm.
“The image of my thought in the sketch, be it poetry or whatever you prefer to call it, does not stand forlorn in the crowded streets: the child stands on the brow of the green hill, with the city stretched in confused fragments below, and, thoughtless of pennies and passers-by, she is playing with the flowers she has gathered; but in play casting them heavenward, and following them with heavenward eyes.”
“Good!” muttered Kenelm, “good!” and then, after a long pause, he added, in a still lower mutter, “Pardon me that remark of mine the other day about a beefsteak. But own that I am right: what you call a sketch from Nature is but a sketch of your own thought.”