han Randy, Christ had in a very personal and specific sense been
born across the sea.

It was in France, too, that the dream had come to him of a future of
creative purpose. He had always wanted to write. Looking back over his
University days, he was aware of a formative process which had led
towards this end. It was there he had communed with the spirit of a
tragic muse. There had been all the traditions of Poe and his
tempestuous youth--and Randy, passing the door which had once opened and
closed on that dark figure, had felt the thrill of a living
personality--of one who spoke still in lines of ineffable
beauty--"_Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and
flow_----" and again "_A dirge for her the doubly dead, in that she died
so young_----" with the gayety and gloom and grandeur of those chiming,
rhyming, tolling bells--"_Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic
rhyme_----" and that "_grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly
shore_----"

"Do you think I could write?" Randy had asked one of his teachers,
coming verse-saturated to the question.

The man had looked at him with somber eyes. "You have an ear for it--and
an eye---- But genius pays a price."

"What do you mean?"

"It shows its heart to the world, dissects its sacred thoughts, has no
secrets----"

"But think of leaving a thing behind you like--'To Helen----'"

"Do you think the knowledge that he had written a few bits of
incomparable verse helped Poe to live? If he had invented a pill or a
headache powder, he would have slept on down and have dined from gold
dishes."

"I'd rather write 'Ulalume' than dine from gold dishes."

"You think that now. But in twenty years you will sigh for a--feather
bed----"

"You don't believe that."

There had come a lighting of the somber eyes. "My dear fellow, if you,
by the grace of God, have it in you to write, what I believe won't have
anything to do with it. You will crucify yourself for the sake of a
line--starve for the love of a rhythm."

Randy had not yet starved for love of a rhythm, but he had lost sleep
during those nights in France, trying to put into words the things that
gripped his soul. There had been beauty as well as horror in those days.
What a world it had been, a world of men--a striving, eager group,
raised for the moment above sordidness, above self----

He had not found verse his medium, although he had drunk eagerly of the
golden cups which others had t