He put it down again, however, very quickly.

"Dear me!" he ejaculated. "Now, who'd have thought that? Here I have the
pencil and the pad and the perseverance, but I'm hanged if the poem is
quite as easy as I had supposed. These little conceits aren't so easy to
write, after all, even when they contain no ideas. Of course, it isn't
hard to say:

"'Sweet month of May, time of the violet wild,
The dandelion golden, and the mild
Ethereal sweetness of the blossoming trees,
The soft suggested calor of the breeze,
The ruby-breasted robin on the lawn,
The thrushes piping sweetly at the dawn,
The gently splashing waters by the weir,
The rose- and lilac-laden atmosphere'--

"because, after all, it's nothing but a catalogue of the specialties of
May; but how the dickens to wind the thing up is what puzzles me. It's
too beautiful and truly poetic to be spoiled by a completing couplet
like:

"'And in the distant dam the croaking frog
Completes, O May, thy wondrous catalogue.'

"Nobody would take a thing like that--and pay for it; but what else can
be said? What do the violets wild, the dandelion, the ruby-breasted robin,
and the lilac-laden atmosphere and other features all do, I'd like to
know? What one of many verbs--oh, tut! Poetry very evidently is not in
my line, after all. I'll turn the vials of my vocabulary upon