"'There is a depth at which perpetual springs
Fresh water, in all lands:
The which once reached, the buried torrent flings
Its treasures o'er the sands.'
"Ouch!" he cried, "that one hit me on the nose: I mean the apple, not the verse.
"'One knows not how, beneath the dark, deep crust,
The clear flood there has come:
One knows not why, amid eternal dust,
Slumbers that sea of foam.'
"Plain enough," he cried, dodging the apples; "the attraction of gravitation did the business for it.
"'Dark-buried, sepulchred, entombed and deep,
Away from mortal ken,
It lies, till, summoned from its silent sleep,
It leaps to light again.'
"Very good," he said, "and now here comes the application, the moral of the poem.
"'So shall we find no intellect so dull,
No soul so cold to move,
No heart of self or sinfulness so full,
But still hath power to love.'
"Of course," he said; "he knows how it is himself; the poet fills the bill exactly.
'It lives immortal, universal all,
The tenant of each breast;
Locked in the silence of unbroken thrall,
And deep and pulseless rest;
Till, at a touch, with burst of power and pride,
Its swollen torrents roll,
Dash all the trappings of the mind aside,
And ride above the soul.'
"Hurrah!" he cried, "that's splendid! But here's some more: 'To Estella.'"