The second evening after thus recognizing its presence he
hurried up the stair from the office to his own room, and there, sitting
down, began to write--not a sonnet to his charmer, neither any dream
about her, not even some sweet song of the waking spring which he felt
moving within him, but the first speech of a dramatic poem. It was a
bold beginning, but all beginners are daring, if not presumptuous.
Hector's aim was to embody an ideal of check, of rousing, of revival, of
new energy and fresh start. All that evening he wrote with running pen,
forgot the dinner-bell after its first summons, and went on until Annie
knocked at his door, dispatched to summon him to the meal. There was in
Hector, indeed, as a small part of the world came by-and-by to know, the
making of a real poet, for such there are in the world at all
times--yea, even now--although they may not be recognized, or even
intended to ripen in the course of one human season. I think Annie
herself was one of such--so full was she of receptive and responsive
faculty in the same kind, and I remain in doubt whether the genuine
enjoyment of verse be not a fuller sign of the presence of what is most
valuable in it than even some power of producing it. For Hector, I
imagine, it gave strong proof of his being a poet indeed that, when he
opened the door to her knock, the appearance of Annie herself, instead
of giving him a thrill of pleasure, occasioned him a little annoyance by
the evanishment of a just culminating train of thought into the vast
and seething void, into which he gazed after it in vain.
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