He said those lines were bad, and that the third and fourth were quite without merit, and almost without meaning! Fancy that!—
"Until her bosom must have made
The bar she leaned on warm
almost without meaning! Suffering Centipedes!" he cried indignantly. "That man must have been brought up on the bottle!"
I think I may truthfully say that from that point on I listened to the old man breathlessly. Buchanan's monograph on "The Fleshly School of Poetry" though wholly out of sympathy with my own views has long been a favorite bit of literary excoriation with me, comparable to Victor Hugo's incisive flaying of Napoleon III, and to have it spring up at me thus out of the alkali desert, through the medium of this beloved vagabond, was indeed an experience. Instead of conversing with my friend, I turned myself into what theatrical people call a "feeder" for the time being, putting questions, and now and then venturing a remark sufficiently suggestive to keep him going. His voice as he ran on gathered in strength, and waxed tuneful and mellow, until, if I had closed my eyes, I could almost have brought myself to believe that it was our much-loved Mark Twain who was speaking with that musical drawl of his, shot through and through with that lyrical note which gave his voice such rare sweetness.
"Suffering Centipedes!" he cried. "That man must have been brought up on the bottle!"
From Rossetti my new-found friend jumped to Whistler—to whom he referred as "Jimmy"—thence to Watts, and from Watts to Ruskin; from Ruskin he ran on to Burne-Jones, and then harked back to Rossetti again.
Rossetti now seemed to become an obsession with him; only it was Rossetti the poet instead of Rossetti the painter to whom he referred. In a few moments the stillness of that sordid coach was echoing to the sonnet of "Lost Days":
"The lost days of my life until to-day,
What were they, could I see them on the street
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
Or golden coins squander'd and still to pay?
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
Or such spill'd water as in dreams must cheat
The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?
I do not see them here; but after death
God knows I know the faces I shall see—
Each one a murder'd self, with low last breath;
'I am thyself—what hast thou done to me?'
'And I—and I—thyself' (lo! each one saith)—
'And thou thyself to all eternity.'"
His voice trembled as he finished, and a long silence followed.