“Well, that must be it. Cray tried to be funny about it to-day in form, and said to me, ‘Good heavens, haven’t you read “In a Garden”?’ And I said I’d never heard of it. And then he said in his funny way to the class, ‘I suppose you’ve all read it.’ And none of them had, which made him look rather an ass. So he said we’d better read it by next week.”
“I can lend you my Swinburne. Only take care of it,” said Mr. Viner. “It’s a wonderful poem.”
| In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, |
| At the sea-down’s edge between windward and lee, |
| Walled round with rocks as an inland island, |
| The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. |
“I say,” exclaimed Michael eagerly, “I never knew Swinburne was a really great poet. And fancy, he’s alive now.”
“Alive, and living at Putney,” said Mr. Viner.
“And yet he wrote what you’ve just said!”
“He wrote that, and many other things too. He wrote:
| Before the beginning of years |
| There came to the making of man |
| Time, with a gift of tears; |
| Grief, with a glass that ran; |
| Pleasure, with pain for leaven, |
| Summer, with flowers that fell; |
| Remembrance fallen from heaven, |
| And madness risen from hell.” |
“Good Lord!” sighed Michael. “And he’s in Putney at this very moment.”
Michael went home clasping close the black volume, and in his room that night, while the gas jet flamed excitably in defiance of rule, he read almost right through the Second Series of Poems and Ballads. It was midnight when he turned down the gas and sank feverishly into bed. For a long while he was saying to himself isolated lines: ‘The wet skies harden, the gates are barred on the summer side.’ ‘The rose-red acacia that mocks the rose.’ ‘Sleep, and if life was bitter to thee, brother.’ ‘For whom all winds are quiet as the sun, all waters as the shore.’