* * * * *

I found religion through Homer: I found poetry through Milton, whose
_Comus_ we had to read for examination by some learned Board. If any
one thing definitely committed me to poesy it was that poem; and as
has nearly always happened to me, the crisis of discovery came in a
flash. We were all there ranked at our inky desks on some drowsy
afternoon. The books lay open before us, the lesson, I suppose,
prepared. But what followed had not been prepared--that some one began
to read:

"The star that bids the shepherd fold
Now the top of Heav'n doth hold;
And the gilded car of day
His glowing axle doth allay
In the steep Atlantic stream"--

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