I forget most of the lines--they were probably great trash, but I hugged them to my bosom as a young mother does her first child. 'Twas sunset in the lone Pacific world, The rich gleams fading in the western sky; Within the still Lagoon the sails were furled, The red-cross flag alone was flaunting high. Before them was the low and palm-fringed shore, Behind, the outer ocean's baffled roar. After which valiant plunge _in medias res_, came a great lump of deception, after the manner of youths--of the island, and the whitehouses, and the banana groves, and above all, the single volcano towering over the whole, which Shaking a sinful isle with thundering shocks, Reproved the worshippers of stones and stocks. Then how a line of foam appears on the Lagoon, which is supposed at first to be a shoal of fish, but turns out to be a troop of naked island beauties, swimming out to the ship. The decent missionaries were certainly guiltless of putting that into my head, whether they ever saw it or not--a great many things happening in the South Seas of which they find it convenient to say nothing. I think I picked it up from Wallis, or Cook, or some other plain spoken voyager. The crew gaze in pardonable admiration, but the hero, in a long speech, reproves them for their lightmindedness, reminds them of their sacred mission, and informs them that, The soldiers of the cross should turn their eyes From carnal lusts and heathen vanities; beyond which indisputable assertion I never got; for this being about the fiftieth stanza, I stopped to take breath a little; and reading and re-reading, patching and touching continually, grew so accustomed to my bantling's face, that, like a mother, I could not tell whether it was handsome or hideous, sense or nonsense. I have since found out that the true plan, for myself at least, is to write off as much as possible at a time, and then lay it by and forget it for weeks--if I can, for months. After that, on returning to it, the mind regards it as something altogether strange and new, and can, or rather ought to, judge of it as it would of the work of another pen. But really, between conceit and disgust, fancying myself one day a great new poet, and the next a mere twaddler, I got so puzzled and anxious, that I determined to pluck up courage, go to Mackaye, and ask him to solve the problem for me. "Hech, sirs, poetry! I've been expecting it. I suppose it's the appointed gate o' a workman's intellectual life--that same lust o' versification. Aweel, aweel,--let's hear."