Fields_, and then ask him to guess who wrote the following stanzas:

A gentle answer did the old Man make,
In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew;
And him with further words I thus bespake,
"What occupation do you there pursue?
This is a lonesome place for one like you."
Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise
Broke from the sable orbs of his yet-vivid eyes.

"This will break Michael's heart," he said at length.
"Poor Michael," she replied; "they wasted hours.
He loved his father so. God give him strength.
This is a cruel thing this life of ours."
The windy woodland glimmered with shut flowers,
White wood anemones that the wind blew down.
The valley opened wide beyond the starry town.

And I think he would reply with some confidence, "John Masefield." He
would he right concerning the second stanza; but the first is, as
every one ought to know and does not, from _Resolution and
Independence_, by William Wordsworth. It is significant that this
is one of the six poems excepted by Mr. Masefield from the mass of
Wordsworthian mediocrity. It is, of course, a great poem, although
when it was published (1807, written in 1802), it seemed by
conventional standards no poem at all. Shortly after its appearance,
some one read it aloud to an intelligent woman; she sobbed
unrestrainedly; then, recovering herself, said shamefacedly, "After
all, it isn't poetry." The reason, I suppose, why she thought it could
not be poetry was because it was so much nearer life than "art." The