a bite out of the sunny side of this and the other, and,
ever stimulated and never satisfied, is hurried through the garden, and,
before he knows it, finds himself at an iron gate which opens outward,
and leaves the place he knows and loves--

--For one he will perhaps soon learn to love and know better,--said the
Master.--But I can help you out with another comparison, not quite so
poetical as yours. Why did not you think of a railway-station, where the
cars stop five minutes for refreshments? Is n't that a picture of the
poet's hungry and hurried feast at the banquet of life? The traveller
flings himself on the bewildering miscellany of delicacies spread before
him, the various tempting forms of ambrosia and seducing draughts of
nectar, with the same eager hurry and restless ardor that you describe
in the poet. Dear me! If it wasn't for All aboard! that summons of the
deaf conductor which tears one away from his half-finished sponge-cake
and coffee, how I, who do not call myself a poet, but only a questioner,
should have enjoyed a good long stop--say a couple of thousand years--at
this way-station on the great railroad leading to the unknown terminus!

--You say you are not a poet,--I said, after a little pause, in which I
suppose both of us were thinking where the great railroad would land us
after carrying us into the dark tunnel, the farther end of which no man
has seen and taken a return train to bring us news about it,--you say
you are not a poet, and yet it seems to me you have some of the elements
which go to make one.

--I don't think you mean to flatter me,--the Master answered,--and, what
is more, for I am not afraid to be honest with you, I don't think you do
flatter me. I have taken the inventory of my faculties as calmly as if I
were an appraiser. I have some of the qualities, perhaps I may say many
of the qualities, that make a man a poet, and yet I am not one. And in
the course of a pretty wide experience of men--and women--(the Master
sighed, I thought, but perhaps I was mistaken)--I have met a good many
poets who were not rhymesters and a good many rhymesters who were not
poets. So I am only one of the Voiceless, that I remember one of you
singers had some verses about. I think there is a little music in me,
but it has not found a voice, and it never will. If I should confess the
truth, there is no mere earthly immortality that I envy so much as the
poet's. If your name is to live at all, it is so mu