London (England) -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
He had a little tune, the scaffolding of a poem, in his head, and to the
sound of it he lived that day, although I don't expect he ever got the
poem into words.
If you start your idea along an uncertain course, you have to stop and
start afresh to get it straight. You can never finish it when once it has
a crooked swing. I gather that motor cyclists occasionally have much the
same experience with their machines.
But Mr. Russell, with a mind steering a tangled course, asked for
nothing better. He was very nearly sure of romance for the first time
in his life.
I hope that the feeling of making poetry is not confined to the people
who write it down. There is no luxury like it, and I hope we all share
it. I think perhaps the same thrill that goes through Mr. Russell and me
when the ghost of a completed thing begins to be seen, also delights the
khaki coster who writes his first--and very likely last--love-letter from
France; and the little old country mother who lies awake composing the In
Memoriam of her son for a local paper; and the burglar "down 'Oxton" who
takes off his cap as a child's funeral goes by. The feeling is: "This is
a thing out of my heart that I am showing. This is my best confession,
and nobody knew there was this within me." I am sure that that great
glory of poetry in one's heart does not wait on achievement. If it did,
what centuries would die unglorified. It is just perfection appearing, to
your equal pride and shame, a perfection that never taunts you with your
limitations.
Mr. Russell and Christina knew well their road through the mist that
afternoon. There was no difficulty in the world, and no need to see or to
think. The sign-posts all spoke the names of fated places. It was useless
for Anonyma to study the map, she found no mention there of the enchanted
way on which their course was set.
"We will not go through Launceston," said Anonyma. "There must be a
quicker way to the sea than that."
Mr. Russell cared not for her and cared not for Launceston. The spell was
cast upon Christina's wheels. There was no escaping the appointed way.
Launceston reached out its net and caught them. Almost as far as the post
office, Anonyma was protesting: "We will NOT go through Launceston."
"Launceston was determined to get us," laughed Mrs. Russell. "Ha-ha!
isn't it humorous the way things happen?"
The sun was setting as they first saw the Cornish sea. The sky was swept
suddenly clear of mist. The seagulls against the sky were like little
crucified angels.
The road ran to the shore.
The sun had little delicate clouds across its face, like the islands in
a Japanese painting. The wet rocks that lay in the sun's path were plated
with gold, and the tall waves with shadowed faces made of that path a
ladder. The fields of foam on the sea looked very blue in the pale light.
The sun was like an angel with a flaming sword. The angel dipped his feet
into the sea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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