So here is my Maiden Effort and probably my Swan Song:—
'At night I think of you, beloved.
Dream that I see your face,
Fancy I feel you kiss me
As I rest in your embrace.
But at the rose glow of morning
You fade like a summer mist,
And I wake, and long
For a dream that has gone,
For a face that I fancied I kissed.'
Of course it is not strictly accurate, for I never have the luck to dream of Michael, 'but a Poet,' I observed as I wrote the last lines down, 'is not expected to be verbally truthful in a Poem.'
'What, still slinging ink, little 'un?' said father, coming into my room at this point, 'why, you've got a blob on your neck!'
And then he picked up this chapter in that impertinent way he has and read it, with his eyes all curled up at the corners.
'Might one criticise the poem, Meg?' he asked diffidently.
'Oh, do,' I replied, conscious that it was beyond all criticism.
'Your "poem,"' he said, getting the word out with difficulty, 'has defective rhymes, darling. "Long" does not rhyme with "gone," nor is the—um—"poem" a sonnet.'
'But I never said it was, daddy.'
'No, Meg?'