From the clover’s creamy gown’—
Pretty, but weak. June—June, for heaven’s sake, girl, don’t write poetry on June. It’s the sickliest subject in the world. It’s been written to death.”
“No, June is immortal,” cried Emily suddenly, a mutinous sparkle replacing the strained look in her eyes. She was not going to let Mr. Carpenter have it all his own way.
But Mr. Carpenter had tossed June aside without reading a line of it.
“‘I weary of the hungry world’—what do you know of the hungry world?—you in your New Moon seclusion of old trees and old maids—but it is hungry. Ode to Winter—the seasons are a sort of disease all young poets must have, it seems—ha! ‘Spring will not forget’—that’s a good line—the only good line in it. H’m’m—Wanderings—
‘I’ve learned the secret of the rune
That the somber pines on the hillside croon’—
Have you—have you learned that secret?”
“I think I’ve always known it,” said Emily dreamily. That flash of unimaginable sweetness that sometimes surprised her had just come and gone.
“Aim and Endeavour—too didactic—too didactic. You’ve no right to try to teach until you’re old—and then you won’t want to—