“Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odor from Dreamland sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a splendor that came and went,
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere,
Of memories that stay not and go not,
Like music heard once by an ear
That cannot forget or reclaim it,
A something so shy, it would shame it
To make it a show,
A something too vague, could I name it, 57
For others to know,
As if I had lived it or dreamed it,
As if I had acted or schemed it,
Long ago!“

“And the last verse, father. I like the last best,” cried Betty, suddenly.

“Why, my deary. I thought you were gone to bed.”

“No, mother lets me sit up a little while longer when you’re reading. I like to hear you.” And he read for her the last verse:––

“And yet, could I live it over,
This life that stirs my brain,
Could I be both maiden and lover,
Moon and tide, bee and clover,
As I seem to have been, once again,
Could I but speak it and show it,
This pleasure more sharp than pain,
That baffles and lures me so,
The world should once more have a poet,
Such as it had
In the ages glad,
Long ago!”

Then, wishing to know more of the secret springs of his little daughter’s life, he asked: “Why do you love that stanza best, Betty, my dear?”

Betty blushed crimson to the roots of her hair, for what she carried in her heart was too precious to tell, but she meant to be a poet. Even then, in the pocket of her calico dress lay a little book and a stubbed lead pencil, and in the book was already the beginning of her great epic. Her father had said the epic was a thing of the past, that in the 58 future none would be written, for that it was a form of expressions that belonged to the world’s youth, and that age brought philosophy and introspection, but not epics.

She meant to surprise her father some day with this poem. The great world was so full of mystery––of seductive beauty and terror and of strange, enticing charm! She saw and felt it always. Even now, in the driving, whirling storm without, in the darkness of her chamber, or when she looked through the frosted panes into the starry skies at midnight, always it was there all about her,––a something unexpressed, unseen, but close––close to her,––the mystery which throbbed through all her small being, and which she was one day to find out and understand and put into her great epic.

She thought over her father’s question, hardly knowing why she liked that last stanza best. She slowly wound up her ball of yarn and thrust the needles through it, and dropped it into her mother’s workbasket before she replied; then, taking up her candle, she looked shyly in her father’s eyes.

“Because I like where it says: ‘This pleasure more sharp than pain, That baffles and lures me so.’” Then she was gone, hurrying away lest they should question her further and learn about the little book in her pocket.