“The vital test of poetry is not its vitality,” said I, “any more than being a best-seller is a test of a good novel. But I think that when a winnowing of the recent harvest takes place in a year or two, when we become more critical than is possible for a people just emerging from the flames that make us all see red, you will find that the harvest of sound poetry will be a record one. We have still the roar of the thunderstorm in our cars; when an earthquake is just over is not the time for one to be asked to say whether the _Pathétique_ or the _Moonlight_ Sonata is the more exquisite.” “Perhaps,” said Friswell doubtfully. “But I allow that you have 'jined your flats' better than Tennyson did. The unutterable vulgarity of that 'gallant six hunderd,' because it happened that 'some one had blundered,' instead of 'blundred,' will not be found in the Armageddon band of buglers. But I don't believe that anything so finished as Wolfe's _Burial of Sir John Moore_ will come to the surface of the melting-pot--I think that the melting-pot suggests more than your harvest. Your harvest hints at the swords being turned into ploughshares; my melting-pot at the bugles being thrown into the crucible. What have you to say about 'Not a drum was heard'?” “That poem is the finest elegy ever written,” said I definitely. “The author, James Wolfe, occupies the place among elegists that single-speech Hamilton does among orators, or Liddell and Scott in a library of humour. From the first line to the last, no false note is sounded in that magnificent funeral march. It is one grand monotone throughout. It cannot be spoken except in a low monotone. It never rises and it never falls until the last line is reached, 'We left him alone in his glory.'” “And the strangest thing about it is that it appeared first in the poets' corner of a wretched little Irish newspaper--the _Newry Telegraph_, I believe it was called,” said Dorothy--it was Dorothy's reading of the poem that first impressed me with its beauty. “The more obscure the crypt in which its body was burned, the more--the more--I can't just express the idea that I'm groping after,” said Friswell. “I should like to help you,” said Dorothy. “Strike a match for me, and I'll try to follow you out of the gloom.” “It's something like this: the poem itself seems to lead you into the gloom of a tomb, so that there is nothing incongruous in its disappearing into the obscurity of a corner of a wretched rag of a newspaper--queer impression for any one to have about such a thing, isn't it?” “Queer, but--well, it was but the body that was buried, the soul of the poetry could not be consigned to the sepulchre, even though 'Resurgam' was cut upon the stone.” “You have strolled away from me, said I. All that I was thinking about Wolfe and that blessed _Newry Telegraph_, was expressed quite adequately by the writer of another Elegy:-- “Full many a gem of purest ray serene,