As the church was striking the tower—'
when every one laughed, and he sat down—on another man's hat. That's the sort of poetry I like, something to make you laugh. Gracious! what's the good of manufacturing misery and letting it loose in little poems to buzz round and torment people? isn't there enough misery ready made? Hood's Song of the Shirt always makes me cry."
"Hood," said Professor Wilson, "was a man of another age, a true poet. He could not have written his Song of the Shirt to-day; the decadence——"
"Now, excuse me," said Hamilton-Cox, "we have fought that question of decadence out, you and I. Hood, I admit, could not have written his Song of the Shirt to-day, simply because shirts are manufactured wholesale by machinery, and he would have to begin it. 'Whir—whir—whir,' which would not be poetry. Women slave at coats and waistcoats and other garments nowadays, and you could scarcely write a song of the waistcoat or a song of the pair of—you understand my point. Poetry is very false, the matchbox-maker is as deserving of the poet's attention as the shirt-maker, yet a poem beginning 'Paste, paste, paste' would be received with laughter, not with tears. You say we are decadents because we don't encourage poetry. I say we are not, we are simply more practical—poetry is to all intents and purposes dead——"
"Is it?" said George Lambert. "Is King Lear dead? I was crying over him last night, but it wasn't at his funeral I was crying. Is old Suckling dead? I bought a first edition of him some time ago, and the fact wasn't mentioned or hinted at in the verses. Is Sophocles dead? Old Maloney at Trinity pounded him into my head, and he's there now alive as ever; and if I was blind to-morrow, I'd still have the skies over his plays to look at and the choruses to hear. Ah no, Mr Cox, poetry is not dead, but they don't write it just now. They don't write it, but it's in every one's heart waiting to be tapped, only there's no man with an augur sharp enough and true enough to do the tapping."
Pamela looked pleased.
"I did not know that you were fond of poetry," she said.
"I love it," said Lambert, in a tone that reminded Charles Bevan of Fanny's tone when she declared her predilection for cats.
"I declare it's delightful," said Professor Wilson, "to find a man of the world who knows all about horses, and is a good billiard-player, and all that, confessing a love for poetry."