Dawn

by H. Rider Haggard

Arthur, however, by this time knew enough of Angela’s abilities to be sure that her “something” would be something more or less worth hearing, and mildly insisted on their production, and then, to her confusion, on her reading them aloud. They ran as follows, and whatever Angela’s opinion of them may have been, the reader shall judge of them for himself:

A STORM ON THE STRINGS
“The minstrel sat in his lonely room,
Its walls were bare, and the twilight grey
Fell and crept and gathered to gloom;
It came like the ghost of the dying day,
And the chords fell hushed and low.
Pianissimo!
“His arm was raised, and the violin
Quivered and shook with the strain it bore,
While the swelling forth of the sounds within
Rose with a sweetness unknown before,
And the chords fell soft and low.
Piano!
“The first cold flap of the tempest’s wings
Clashed with the silence before the storm,
The raindrops pattered across the strings
As the gathering thunder-clouds took form—
Drip, drop, high and low.
Staccato!
“Heavily rolling the thunder roared,
Sudden and jagged the lightning played,
Faster and faster the raindrops poured,
Sobbing and surging the tree-crests swayed,
Cracking and crashing above, below.
Crescendo!
“The wind tore howling across the wold,
And tangled his train in the groaning trees,
Wrapped the dense clouds in his mantle cold,
Then shivered and died in a wailing breeze,
Whistling and weeping high and low,
Sostenuto!
“A pale sun broke from the driving cloud,
And flashed in the raindrops serenely cool:
At the touch of his finger the forest bowed,
As it shimmered and glanced in the ruffled pool,
While the rustling leaves soughed soft and low.
Gracioso!
“It was only a dream on the throbbing strings,
An echo of Nature in phantasy wrought,
A breath of her breath and a touch of her wings
From a kingdom outspread in the regions of thought.
Below rolled the sound of the city’s din,
And the fading day, as the night drew in,
Showed the quaint old face and the pointed chin,
And the arm that was raised o’er the violin,
As the old man whispered his hope’s dead tale,
To the friend who could comfort, though others might fail,
And the chords stole hushed and low.
Pianissimo!”

He stopped, and the sheet of paper fell from his hands.

“Well,” she said, with all the eagerness of a new-born writer, “tell me, do you think them very bad?”

“Well, Angela, you know——”

“Ah! go on now; I am ready to be crushed. Pray don’t spare my feelings.”

“I was about to say that, thanks be to Providence, I am not a critic; but I think——”

“Oh! yes, let me hear what you think. You are speaking so slowly, in order to get time to invent something extra cutting. Well, I deserve it.”

“Don’t interrupt; I was going to say that I think the piece above the average of second-class poetry, and that a few of the lines touch the first-class standard. You have caught something of the ‘divine afflatus’ that the drunken old fellow said he could not cage. But I do not think that you will ever be popular as a writer of verses if you keep to that style; I doubt if there is a magazine in the kingdom that would take those lines unless they were by a known writer. They would return them marked, ‘Good, but too vague for the general public.’ Magazine editors don’t like lines from ‘a kingdom outspread in the regions of thought,’ for, as they say, such poems are apt to excite vagueness in the brains of that dim entity, the ‘general public.’ What they do like are commonplace ideas, put in pretty language, and sweetened with sentimentality or emotional religious feelings, such as the thinking powers of their subscribers are competent to absorb without mental strain, and without leaving their accustomed channels. To be popular it is necessary to be commonplace, or at the least to describe the commonplace, to work in a well-worn groove, and not to startle—requirements which, unfortunately, simple as they seem, very few persons possess the art of acting up to. See what happens to the unfortunate novelist, for instance, who dares to break the unwritten law, and defraud his readers of the orthodox transformation scene of the reward of virtue and the discomfiture of vice; or to make his creation finish up in a way that, however well it may be suited to its tenor, or illustrate its more subtle meaning, is contrary to the ‘general reader’s’ idea as to how it should end—badly, as it is called. He simply collapses, to rise no more, if he is new at the trade, and, if he is a known man, that book won’t sell.”

“You talk quite feelingly,” said Angela, who was getting rather bored, and wanted, not unnaturally, to hear more about her own lines.