"I like your refrain, my dear Ferdinand," observed the vicar graciously; "it has a certain pleasant lilt about it, but I'm afraid your verses are somewhat gruesome. Still, they have merit. Oh, yes, they have merit."
"I'm glad you think so," said the modest poet humbly, to whom praise was as rain on thirsty flowers. "I hope to do better soon."
"I've no doubt you will," said Beaumont, rather sorry for the poor youth, who was blushing painfully. "Your verses are, to a certain extent, an echo of Villon, still you have a musical ear, and that is a great thing. If I may be permitted to give an opinion I rather think your views are a trifle pessimistic."
"Just what we were talking about," cried Reginald gaily. "A regret for the past and a lament for the present."
"It is the spirit of the age," sighed Ferdinand, putting the poem in his pocket. "It is hard to escape its influence."
"If any one had a chance of escaping it you ought to be the individual," said Beaumont, with a smile. "In London, where the latest ideas are floating in the air, it is difficult to be original, but out here, where the work is standing still, you ought to have struck out a new line. I'm afraid your poetry comes from books, not from Nature."
"Why so?" demanded Ferdinand, rather nettled.
"By the very fact that you used in that ballade an exotic form of rhyme, and the ideas therein are the dreary, hopeless sorrows of a worn-out world. Sing, like Herrick of the things around you,
'Of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,
Of April, May, of June and July flowers,'
then you will probably strike a new note."