Guest.
“Now get thee on beyond the sunset—git!”
Host. Yes, that was cruel! I suppose you could never finish the poem after that. But poets must have to do a great deal more waiting than any other class of literary workers, for they have to wait not only for ideas but for words, which, in poetry, have so much to do with the mechanism of the verse as well as the expression of the idea.
Guest. What the Dii Majores may do, or may have done, I could not presume to say; but with us verse-makers, sometimes it is only the words that do come, at first. The sense, import, and whole motive sometimes arrive much later. This ought to be kept a secret, for it is not to our credit. But I remember once, some one used the phrase, “For the time being.” It was immediately invested with a subtle extra value which seemed left to me to discover and define. Any maker of verse, I should guess, would in the same way be followed up continually by refrains and catch-words—the mere gossip of Parnassus, one might say. You have the fragments of a puzzle; they are scattered; some are missing. They must be hunted up and fitted together. Sometimes the last will be first and the first will be last, when the metrical whole is completed. For example of how detached and meaningless these first suggestions may be, take this line and a half:
“In the dim meadows flecked with asphodel,
I shall remember!”
It was months after this suggestion came to me that I found the context and motive of the verse. I had to wait for the rest, and take whatever came.
A CORNER OF THE DRAWING-ROOM.