“It’s great. Remember that Flower-in-the-crannied-wall piece. I don’t recollect how it goes exactly, but he pulls it out by the roots an’ talks at it. Says if we knew what it was and how it had come we’d know what God and man are. I reckon that’s right. He sure set me thinking.”
“I love him.” The girl’s face was aglow in the lamplight. “He’s just wonderful, that’s all.”
It is difficult now to understand the tremendous influence of Tennyson among all the English-speaking peoples fifty years ago. Before Darwin was accepted and even before he had published, the Victorian poet was pointing the way with prophetic vision. He was the apostle of the new age, of the intellectual freedom that was to transform the world. His voice penetrated to the farthest corners of Australia and America. The eager and noble minds of youth turned everywhere to him for guidance.
To-night, however, Hugh was nibbling at verse less profound. He was reading “The Gardener’s Daughter.” A descriptive phrase flashed at him:
A certain miracle of symmetry,
A miniature of loveliness, all grace
Summed up and closed in little.
Involuntarily his glance swept to the dusky head on the other side of the table. Her shining-eyed ardour seemed to him the flowering of all young delight. Another verse leaped out at him from the page:
. . . those eyes
Darker than darkest pansies, and that hair