I have often wished that I could write a novel in which, as mostly
in life, thank goodness, nothing happens. Jane Austen, it has been
objected, forestalled me there, and it is true that she very nearly
did--but not quite. It was a point for her art to make that the
novel should have form. Form involved plot, plot a logic of events;
events--well, that means that there were collisions. They may have
been mild shocks, but persons did knock their heads together, and
there were stars to be seen by somebody. In life, in a majority of
cases, there are no stars, yet life does not on that account cease to
be interesting; and even if stars should happen to be struck out, it
is not the collision, nor the stars either, which interest us most.
No, it is our state of soul, our mental process under the stress which
we care about, and as mental process is always going on, and the state
of the soul is never the same for two moments together, there is ample
material for a novel of extreme interest, which need never finish,
which might indeed be as perennial as a daily newspaper or the _Annual
Register_. Why is it, do you suppose, that anybody, if he can, will
read anybody else's letter? It is because every man-Jack of us lives
in a cage, cut off from every other man-Jack; because we are incapable
of knowing what is going on in the mind of our nearest and dearest,
and because we burn for the assurance we may get by evidence of
homogeneity procurable from any human source. Man is a creature of
social instinct condemned by his nature to be solitary. Creatures in
all outward respects similar to himself are awhirl about him. They
cannot help him, nor he them; he cannot even be sure, for all he may
assume it, that they share his hope and calling.
Ensphered in flesh we live and die,
And see a myriad souls adrift,
Our likes, and send our voiceless cry
Shuddering across the void: "The truth!
Succour! The truth!" None can reply.
That is the state of our case. We can cope with mere events, comedy,
tragedy, farce. The things that happen to us are not our life. They
are imposed upon life, they come and go. But life is a secret process.
We only see the accretions.
The novel which I dreamed of writing has recently been done, or rather
begun, by Miss Dorothy Richardson. She betters the example of Jane
Austen by telling us much more about what seems to be infinitely less,
but is not so in reality. She dips into the well whereof Miss Austen
skims the surface. She has essayed to report the mental process of a
young woman's lifetime from moment to moment. In the course of four,
if not five, volumes nothing has happened yet but the death of a
mother and the marriage of a sister or so. She may write forty, and I
shall be ready for the forty-first. Mental process, the states of
the soul, emotional reaction--these as they are moved in us by other
people are Miss Richardson's subject-matter, and according as these
are handled is the interest we can devote to her novels. These
fleeting things are Miss Richardson's game, and they are the things
which interest us most in ourselves, and the things which we desire to
know most about in our neighbours.
But, of course, it won't do. Miss Richardson does not, and cannot,
tell us all. A novel is a piece of art which does not so much report
life as transmute it. She takes up what she needs for her purpose, and
that may not be our purpose. And so it is with poetry--we don't go to
that for the facts, but for the essence of fact. The poet who told us
all about himself at some particular pass would write a bad poem, for
it is his affair to transfigure rather than transmute, to move us by
beauty at least as much as by truth. What we look for so wistfully
in each other is the raw material of poetry. We can make the finished
article for ourselves, given enough matter; and indeed the poetry
which is imagined in contemplation is apt to be much finer than that
which has passed through the claws of prosody and syntax. The fact,
to be short with it, is that literature has an eye upon the consumer.
Whether it is marketable or not, it is intended for the public. Now
no man will undress in public with design. It may be a pity, but so
it is. Undesignedly, I don't say. It would be possible, I think,
by analysis, to track the successive waves of mental process in _In
Memoriam_. Again, _The Angel in the House_ brought Patmore as near to
self-explication as a poet can go. Shakespeare's Sonnets offer a more
doubtful field of experiment.
What then? Shall we go to the letter-writers--to Madame de Sevigne, to
Gray, to Walpole and Cowper, Byron and Lamb? A letter-writer implies
a letter-reader, and just that inadequacy of spoken communication
will smother up our written words. Madame de Sévigné must placate her
high-sniffing daughter, Gray must please himself; Walpole must at any
cost be lively, Cowper must be urbane to Lady Hesketh or deprecate
the judgment of the Reverend Mr. Newton. Byron was always before the
looking-glass as he wrote; and as for Charles Lamb, do not suppose
that he did anything but hide in his clouds of ink. Sir Sidney Colvin
thinks that Keats revealed himself in his letters, but I cannot agree
with him. Keats is one of the best letter-writers we have; he can be
merry, fanciful, witty, thoughtful, even profound. He has a sardonic
turn of language hardly to be equalled outside Shakespeare. "Were it
in my device, I would reject a Petrarchal coronation--on account of my
dying day, and because women have cancers?" Where will you match that
but from Hamlet? But Keats knew himself. "It is a wretched thing to
confess, but it is a very fact, that not one word I can utter can be
taken for granted as an opinion growing out of my identical Nature."
So I find him in his letters, swayed rather by his fancies than his
states of soul, until indeed that soul of his was wrung by agony of
mind and disease of body. Revelation, then, like gouts of blood,
did issue, but of that I do not now write. No man is sane at such a
crisis.
_Parva componere magnis_, there is a letter contained in _The Early
Diary of Frances Burney_(ed. Mrs. A.R. Ellis, 1889), more completely
apocalyptic than anything else of the kind accessible to me. Its
writer was Maria Allen, daughter of Dr. Burney's second wife,
therefore half-sister to the charming Burney girls. She was a young
lady who could let herself go, in act as well as on paper, and withal,
as Fanny judged her, "flighty, ridiculous, uncommon, lively, comical,
entertaining, frank, and undisguised"--or because of it--she
did contrive to unfold her panting and abounding young self more
thoroughly than the many times more expert. You have her here in the
pangs of a love-affair, of how long standing I don't know, but now
evidently in a bad state of miss-fire. It was to end in elopement,
post-chaise, clandestine marriage, in right eighteenth-century. Here
it is in an earlier state, all mortification, pouting and hunching of
the shoulder. I reproduce it with Maria's punctuation, which shows it
to have proceeded, as no doubt she did herself, in gasps:
"I was at the Assembly, forced to go entirely against my own
Inclination. But I always have sacrificed my own Inclinations
to the will of other people--could not resist the pressing
Importunity of--Bet Dickens--to go--tho' it proved Horribly
stupid. I drank tea at the--told old Turner--I was determined
not to dance--he would not believe me--a wager ensued--half
a crown provided I followed my own Inclinations--agreed--Mr.
Audley asked me. I refused--sat still--yet followed my own
Inclinations. But four couple began--Martin (c'était Lui)
was there--yet stupid--n'importe--quite Indifferent--on both
sides--Who had I--to converse with the whole Evening--not
a female friend--none there--not an acquaintance--All
Dancing--who then--I've forgot--n'importe--I broke my
earring--how--heaven knows--foolishly enough--one can't always
keep on the Mask of Wisdom--well n'importe I danced a Minuet a
quatre the latter end of the Eve--with a stupid Wretch--need
I name him--They danced cotillions almost the whole Night--two
sets--yet I did not join them--Miss Jenny Hawkins danced--with
who--can't you guess--well--n'importe------"
There is more, but my pen is out of breath. Nobody but Mr. Jingle ever
wrote like that; and in so far as Maria Allen may be said to have had
a soul, there in its little spasms is the soul of Maria Allen, with
all the _malentendus_ of the ballroom and all the surgings of a
love-affair at cross-purposes thrown in.
As for Fanny Burney's early diary, its careful and admirable editor
claims that you have in it "the only published, perhaps the only
existing record of the life of an English girl, written of herself in
the eighteenth century." I believe that to be true. It is a record,
and a faithful and very charming record of the externals of such a
life. As such it is, to me, at least, a valuable thing. If it does
not unfold the amiable, brisk, and happy Fanny herself, there are two
simple reasons why it could not. First, she was writing her journal
for the entertainment of old Mr. Crisp of Chessington, the "Daddy
Crisp" of her best pages; secondly, it is not at all likely that she
knew of anything to unfold. Nor, for that matter, was Fanny herself of
the kind that can unfold to another person. Yet there is a charm all
over the book, which some may place here, some there, but which
all will confess. For me it is not so much that Fanny herself is a
charming girl, and a girl of shrewd observation, of a pointed pen, and
an admirable gift of mimicry. She has all that, and more--she has a
good heart. Her sister Susan is as good as she, and there are many of
Susan's letters. But the real charm of the book, I think, is in the
series of faithful pictures it contains of the everyday round of an
everyday family. Dutch pictures all--passers-by, a knock at the front
door, callers--Mr. Young, "in light blue embroidered with silver,
a bag and sword, and walking in the rain"; a jaunt to Greenwich, a
concert at home--the Agujari in one of her humours; a masquerade--a
very private one, at the house of Mr. Laluze.... Hetty had for three
months thought of nothing else ... she went as a Savoyard with a
hurdy-gurdy fastened round her waist. Nothing could look more simple,
innocent and pretty. "My dress was a close pink Persian vest
covered with a gauze in loose pleats...." What else? Oh, a visit to
Teignmouth--Maria Allen now Mrs. Ruston; another to Worcester; quiet
days at King's Lynn, where "I have just finished _Henry and Frances_
... the greatest part of the last volume is wrote by Henry, and on
the gravest of grave subjects, and that which is most dreadful to our
thoughts, Eternal Misery...." Terrific novel: but need I go on? There
may be some to whom a description of the nothings of our life will be
as flat as the nothings themselves--but I am not of that party. The
things themselves interest me, and I confess the charm. It is the
charm of innocence and freshness, a morning dew upon the words.
The Burneys, however, can do no more for us than shed that auroral
dew. They cannot reassure us of our normal humanity, since they needed
reassurance themselves.
Where, then, shall we turn? So far as I am aware, to two only, except
for two others whom I leave out of account. Rousseau is one, for it is
long since I read him, but my recollection is that the _Confessions_
is a kind of novel, pre-meditated, selective, done with great art.
Marie Bashkirtseff is another. I have not read her at all. Of the two
who remain I leave Pepys also out of account, because, though it may
be good for us to read Pepys, it is better to have read him and be
through with it. There, under the grace of God, go a many besides
Pepys, and among them every boy who has ever befouled a wall with a
stump of pencil. We are left then with one whom it is ill to name
in the same fill of the inkpot, "Wordsworth's exquisite sister," as
Keats, who saw her once, at once knew her to be.
In Dorothy Wordsworth's journals, you may have the delight of daily
_intercourse--famigliarmente discorrendo_--with one of the purest
and noblest souls ever housed in flesh; to that you may add the
reassurance to be got from word and implication beyond doubt. She
tells us much, but implies more. We may see deeply into ourselves, but
she sees deeply into a deeper self than most of us can discern. It is
not only that, knowing her, we are grounded in the rudiments of honour
and lovely living; it is to learn that human life can be so lived, and
to conclude that of that at least is the Kingdom of Heaven.
These journals are for fragments only of the years which they cover,
and as such exist for Jan.-May, 1798 (Alfoxden); May-Dec, 1800,
Oct.-Dec, 1801, Jan.-July, 1802: all these at Grasmere. They have been
printed by Professor Knight, and I have the assurance of Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth that what little has been omitted is unimportant. Nothing
is unimportant to me, and I wish the whole had been given us; but
what we have is enough whereby to trace the development of her
extraordinary mind and of her power of self-expression. The latter,
undoubtedly, grew out of emotion, which gradually culminated until the
day of William Wordsworth's marriage. There it broke, and with it, as
if by a determination of the will, there the revelation ceased. A new
life began with the coming of Mary Wordsworth to Dove Cottage, a life
of which Dorothy records the surface only.
The Alfoxden fragment (20 Jan.-22 May, 1798), written when she
was twenty-seven, is chiefly notable for its power of interpreting
landscape. That was a power which Wordsworth himself possessed in
a high degree. There can be no doubt, I think, that they egged each
other on, but I myself should find it hard to say which was egger-on
and which the egged. This is the first sentence of it:
"20 Jan.--The green paths down the hillsides are channels for
streams. The young wheat is streaked by silver lines of water
running between the ridges, the sheep are gathered together
on the slopes. After the wet dark days, the country seems more
populous. It peoples itself in the sunbeams."
Here is one of a few days later:
"23rd.--Bright sunshine; went out at 3 o'cl. The sea perfectly
calm blue, streaked with deeper colour by the clouds, and
tongues or points of sand; on our return of a gloomy red. The
sun gone down. The crescent moon, Jupiter and Venus. The sound
of the sea distinctly heard on the tops of the hills, which
we could never hear in summer. We attribute this partly to
the bareness of the trees, but chiefly to the absence of the
singing birds, the hum of insects, that noiseless noise which
lives in the summer air. The villages marked out by beautiful
beds of smoke. The turf fading into the mountain road."
She handles words, phrases, like notes or chords of music, and never
gets her landscape by direct description. One more picture and I must
leave it:
"26.-- ... Walked to the top of a high hill to see a
fortification. Again sat down to feed upon the prospect; a
magnificent scene, _curiously_ spread out for even minute
inspection though so extensive that the mind is afraid to
calculate its bounds...."
Coleridge was with them most days, or they with him. Here is a curious
point to note. Dorothy records:
"March 7th.--William and I drank tea at Coleridge's. Observed
nothing particularly interesting.... One only leaf upon the
top of a tree--the sole remaining leaf--danced round and round
like a rag blown by the wind."
And Coleridge has in _Christabel_:
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.
William, Dorothy, and Coleridge went to Hamburg at the end of that
year, but in 1800 the brother and sister were in Grasmere; and the
journal which opens with May 14, at once betrays the great passion of
Dorothy's life:
"William and John set off into Yorkshire after dinner at
half-past two o'clock, cold pork in their pockets. I left them
at the turning of the Low-Wood bay under the trees. My heart
was so full I could hardly speak to W., when I gave him a
farewell kiss. I sate a long time upon a stone at the margin
of the lake, and after a flood of tears my heart was easier.
The lake looked to me, I know not why, dull and melancholy,
and the weltering on the shore seemed a heavy sound.... I
resolved to write a journal of the time till W. and J. return,
and I set about keeping my resolve, because I will not quarrel
with myself, and because I shall give William pleasure by it
when he comes again...."
"Because I will not quarrel with myself!" She is full of such
illuminations. Here is another:
"Sunday, June 1st.--After tea went to Ambleside round the
lakes. A very fine warm evening. Upon the side of Loughrigg
_my heart dissolved in what I saw_."
Now here is her account of a country funeral which she reads into, or
out of, the countryside:
"Wednesday, 3rd Sept.-- ... a funeral at John Dawson's.... I
was affected to tears while we stood in the house, the coffin
lying before me. There were no near kindred, no children.
When we got out of the dark house the sun was shining, and
the prospect looked as divinely beautiful as I ever saw it.
It seemed more sacred than I had ever seen it, _and yet more
allied to human life_. I thought she was going to a quiet
spot, and I could not help weeping very much...."
The italics are mine. William was pleased to call her weeping "nervous
blubbering."
And then we come to 1802, the great last year of a twin life; the
last year of the five in which those two had lived as one soul and
one heart. They were at Dove Cottage, on something under £150 a year.
Poems were thronging thick about them; they were living intensely.
John was alive. Mary Hutchinson was at Sockburn. Coleridge was still
Coleridge, not the bemused and futile mystic he was to become. As for
Dorothy, she lives a thing enskied, floating from ecstasy to ecstasy.
It is the third of March, and William is to go to London. "Before we
had quite finished breakfast Calvert's man brought the horses for
Wm. We had a deal to do, pens to make, poems to be put in order for
writing, to settle for the press, pack up.... Since he left me at
half-past eleven (it is now two) I have been putting the drawers in
order, laid by his clothes, which he had thrown here and there and
everywhere, filed two months' newspapers, and got my dinner, two
boiled eggs and two apple tarts.... The robins are singing sweetly.
Now for my walk. I _will_ be busy. I _will_ look well, and be well
when he comes back to me. O the Darling! Here is one of his bitter
apples, I can hardly find it in my heart to throw it into the
fire.... I walked round the two lakes, crossed the stepping-stones at
Rydalefoot. Sate down where we always sit. I was full of thought of my
darling. Blessings on him." Where else in our literature will you find
mood so tender, so intimately, so delicately related?
A week later, and William returned. With him, it seems, her
descriptive powers. "Monday morning--a soft rain and mist. We walked
to Rydale for letters, The Vale looked very beautiful in excessive
simplicity, yet at the same time, uncommon obscurity. The church stood
alone, mountains behind. The meadows looked calm and rich, bordering
on the still lake. Nothing else to be seen but lake and island."
Exquisite landscape. For its like we must go to Japan. Here is
another. An interior. It is the 23rd of March, "about ten o'clock, a
quiet night. The fire flickers, and the watch ticks. I hear nothing
save the breathing of my beloved as he now and then pushes his book
forward, and turns over a leaf...." No more, but the peace of it is
profound, the art incomparable.
In April, between the 5th and 12th, William went into Yorkshire upon
an errand which she knew and dreaded. Her trouble makes the words
throb.
"Monday, 12th.... The ground covered with snow. Walked to T.
Wilkinson's and sent for letters. The woman brought me one
from William and Mary. It was a sharp windy night. Thomas
Wilkinson came with me to Barton and questioned me like a
catechiser all the way. Every question was like the snapping
of a little thread about my heart. I was so full of thought of
my half-read letter and other things. I was glad when he left
me. Then I had time to look at the moon while I was thinking
of my own thoughts. The moon travelled through the clouds,
tinging them yellow as she passed along, with two stars near
her, one larger than the other.... At this time William, as
I found the next day, was riding by himself between Middleham
and Barnard Castle."
I don't know where else to find the vague torment of thought, its way
of enhancing colour and form in nature, more intensely observed. Next
day: "When I returned _William_ was come. _The surprise shot through
me._" This woman was not so much poet as crystal vase. You can see the
thought cloud and take shape.
The twin life was resumed for yet a little while. In the same month
came her descriptions of the daffodils in Gowbarrow Park, and of the
scene by Brothers Water, which prove to anybody in need of proof
that she was William's well-spring of poesy. Not that the journal is
necessarily involved. No need to suppose that he even read it. But
that she could make him see, and be moved by, what she had seen is
proved by this: "17th.-- ... I saw a robin chasing a scarlet butterfly
this morning"; and "Sunday, 18th.-- ... William wrote the poem on _The
Robin and the Butterfly_." No, beautiful beyond praise as the journals
are, it is certain that she was more beautiful than they. And what a
discerning, illuminative eye she had! "As I lay down on the grass, I
observed the glittering silver line on the ridge of the backs of the
sheep, owing to their situation respecting the sun, which made them
look beautiful, but with something of strangeness, like animals of
another kind, as if belonging to a more splendid world...." What a
woman to go a-gipsying through the world with!
Then comes the end.... "Thursday, 8th July.-- In the afternoon, after
we had talked a little, William fell asleep. I read _The Winter's
Tale_; then I went to bed but did not sleep. The swallows stole in and
out of their nest, and sat there, _whiles_ quite still; _whiles_ they
sung low for two minutes or more at a time, just like a muffled robin.
William was looking at _The Pedlar_ when I got up. He arranged it,
and after tea I wrote it out--280 lines.... The moon was behind....
We walked first to the top of the hill to see Rydale. It was dark and
dull, but our own vale was very solemn--the shape of Helm Crag was
quite distinct though black. We walked backwards and forwards on the
White Moss path; there was a sky like white brightness on the lake....
O beautiful place! Dear Mary, William. The hour is come.... I must
prepare to go. The swallows, I must leave them, the wall, the garden,
the roses, all. Dear creatures, they sang last night after I was in
bed; seemed to be singing to one another, just before they settled to
rest for the night. Well, I must go. Farewell."
Next day she set out with William to meet her secret dread, knowing
that life in Rydale could never be the same again. Wordsworth married
Mary Hutchinson on the 4th October, 1802. The secret is no secret now,
for Dorothy was a crystal vase.
_NOCTES AMBROSIANÆ_
Weather has sent me indoors, chance to an old book. I have been
reading _Noctes Ambrosianæ_ again. Bad buffoonery as much of it is and
full to the throttle of the warm-watery optimism induced by whisky,
yet as fighting literature it is incalculably better than its modern
substitute in _Blackwood_. The sniper who monthly tries to pinch out
his adversaries there--Mrs. Partington's nephew, in fact--wants the
one quality which will make that kind of thing intolerable--that is,
high spirits. The Black Hussars of Maga both had them, and drank
them, frequently neat. I judge that the Nephew has to be more careful.
Eupepsy is not revealed in his writing; but Christopher North and his
co-mates must have had the stomachs of ostriches. The guzzling and
swilling which were the staple of the _Noctes_ were remarked upon at
the time as incredible as well as disgusting; but it is to be presumed
that they wouldn't have been there if, to the majority at least, they
had not been a counsel of perfection. "I wasn't as drunk as I should
have liked to be, your Worship, but I was drunk."
As well as that, most people thought it exceedingly funny. Dickens
and his readers thought it funny too. Christmas would not have been
Christmas unless somebody got beastly drunk. We have moved on since
then, and carried the Nephew with us, _multum gementem_. One can see
him kicking violently under the arm of the _Zeitgeist_ as he is borne
down the ringing grooves of change. Now, therefore, he is tart in his
musings, chastises rather with fleas than with scorpions.
When the _Noctes_ can stand away from Politics and Literature--for the
two were always involved in those days, so that unless you approved a
man's party you couldn't allow that he wrote tolerable verse--they can
wile away a winter evening very pleasantly. Christopher North had an
eye for character, a sense of humour, and knew and loved the country.
He was country bred. He is at his best when he combines his loves,
as he does in the person of the Shepherd. Keep the Shepherd off (_a_)
girls, (_b_) nursing mothers, (_c_) the Sabbath, (_d_) eating, (_e_)
drinking, (_f_) his own poetry, and he is good reading. Knowing and
loving Ettrick Forest as I do, I need no better guide to it than
North's Shepherd. Having fished all its waters from Loch Skene
downwards, I should ask no better company, evenings, at Tibbie
Shields' or the Tushielaw Inn. Edward FitzGerald could have made a
good book out of the _Noctes_, cutting it down to one volume out of
four. As it is mainly, it will stand or fall by its high spirits. The
really funny character in it is Gurney, the shorthand writer, who is
kept in a cupboard, and at the end of the last uproarious chapter,
when the coast is cleared of the horseplaying protagonists, "comes out
like a mouse, and begins to nibble cheese." That is imagination.
The real Ettrick Shepherd was better than the _Noctes_ can make him.
Lockhart gives a delightful account of his first visit to Walter Scott
in Castle Street--his first visit, mind you. He is shown into the
drawing-room and finds Mrs. Scott, disposed, _à la_ Madame Recamier,
on a sofa. His acuteness comes to the aid of his bewilderment, and he
is quick to extend himself in similar fashion upon the opposite sofa.
In the dining-room he was much more at his ease. Before the end of the
meal he had his host as "Wattie" and his hostess as "Charlotte." Next
day he wrote to Scott to ask what he might have said, and to offer
apologies if needful.
A remark put into his mouth by North, that he could "ban" Burns for
having forestalled him with the line--
The summer to Nature, my Willie to me!
set me wondering wherein consists the true lyrical magic. In that line
of Burns's, clearly, it lies in the harmony of lyric thought and lyric
lilt. In--
Come away, come away, Death,
it is in the lilt alone. One thing only about it is sure, and that is
that the diction must be conversational. There will be tears in the
voice, but the voice must be that of the homely earth, never of the
stage, never of the pulpit If you agree with that, you will have to
cut out practically all the poets from Dryden to Cowper, Gray and
Collins among them; for Gray has a learned sock, and hardly allows
familiarity when he is elegising Horace Walpole's cat. But Shakespeare
proves it, Ben Jonson proves it, and all the good poets from
Wordsworth. Burns had the vernacular to help him, and for the most
part a model to steer by. All Lowland Scots, lads and lassies, wail,
and occasionally howl, in his songs. The first two lines of that one
envied by Hogg run:
Here awa, there awa, wandering Willie,
Here awa, there awa, haud awa hame!
and of these the second is traditional, altered only in one word.
Burns writes "haud awa hame" instead of repeating "here awa"--and
improves it. Shakespeare used the King's English, but never shirked a
racy idiom. Here is a good instance from the Sonnets, and from one of
the greatest of them, "Farewell, thou art too dear."
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter--
In sleep a king; but waking _no such matter_.
You might call that a slang phrase and be right.
There are other cases, and many; some where he goes all lengths, and
one at least where he goes beyond them. But to leave Shakespeare, for
a perfect example of passion married to common speech, commend me to--
Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;
But I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart
That thus so clearly I myself can free.
Intense feeling, intense music, a lovely thing: a poem.