They had a Chief, or Master, or Mystagogue, who had gathered them together and was taking them on this perilous pilgrimage. I am not making this up. It is true.
So went they, so bumped they, with a prodigious clatter, and only one Prosator among them, the serf at the wheel; but they, all Poets, were clinging on for dear life in the wooden truck behind ... when—oh, my God!—a wheel struck something, and off the tumbril went into the ditch, and the Poets were flung far and wide. But Apollo stayed the hand of Death; they were the worse for nothing more than bruises. For Phœbus Apollo in his house of light saw Death going down through clouds upon England and he said, "Death, where go you?" and Death answered, "I go to make an end of Eleven Poets." But the Far-Darter answered him again saying, "Oh! Death, tarry a moment while I pour you out the dark wine of Africa which the Massillians have brought over the cloud-shadowed sea to the ports of home."
So Death tarried, and when he had drunk that wine he slept; but while he slept, the Eleven Poets were saved. The lorry was, I know not how, set on its wheels again, and continued, in a chastened fashion, a less violent career, towards The Goal.
That Goal was a house where I had the good fortune to meet them; for in those days I was always in luck's way. I met them for one brief hour. I was not allowed to eat with them. I was sent for after the meal, as children are allowed to come in for dessert.... Yet was I older than most of these.
I did not waste the occasion, but almost immediately after my introduction to the Eleven Poets I challenged the Mystagogue, an Irishman, the Chief of the Band, and asked him the great question which has intrigued my mind from childhood.
"How," said I, "is poetry written?"
He put into his eyes a far-away look, like that of a fish which is dead, and he said in a mournful tone (did the Mystagogue):
"I cannot tell you.... I cannot communicate it to you.... It is a Muse."
I was naturally annoyed, for it was no answer at all; and I said (perhaps a little too sharply):