and immediately, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, it was changed--for me--from verse to poetry; that is, from a jingle to a significant fact. It was more than it appeared; it was transfigured; its implication was manifest. That's all I can say--except this, that, untried as I was, I jumped into the poetic skin of the thing, and felt as if I had written it. I knew all about it, "_e'l chi, e'l quale_"; I was privy to its intricacy; I caught without instruction the alternating beat in the second line, and savoured all the good words, _gilded car_, _glowing axle_, _Star that bids the shepherd fold_. _Allay_ ravished me, young as I was. I knew why he had called the Atlantic stream _steep_, and remembered Homer's "Στυγὸς ὔδατος αἰπὰ ῥέεθρα." Good soul, our pedagogue suggested _deep_! I remember to this hour the sinking of the heart with which I heard him. But the flash passed and darkness again gathered about me, the normal darkness of those hateful days. "Sabrina fair" lifted it; my sky showed me an amber shaft. I am recording moments, the reader will remember, the few gleams which visited me in youth. I was far from the time when I could connect them, see that poetry was the vesture of religion, the woven garment whereby we see God. Love had to teach me that. I was not born until I loved. My third happy memory is of a brief and idyllic attachment, very fervent, very romantic, entirely my own, and as I remember it, now, entirely beautiful. Nothing remains but the fragrance of it, and its dream-like quality, the sense I have of straying with the beloved through a fair country. Such things assure me that I was not wholly dead during those crushing years of servitude.