“Heavily rolling the thunder roared,
Sudden and jagged the lightning played,
Faster and faster the raindrops poured,
Sobbing and surging the tree-crests swayed,
Cracking and crashing above, below. 

          
                                                                              Crescendo!

“The wind tore howling across the wold,
And tangled his train in the groaning trees,
Wrapped the dense clouds in his mantle cold,
Then shivered and died in a wailing breeze,
Whistling and weeping high and low,

          
                                                                              Sostenuto!

“A pale sun broke from the driving cloud,
And flashed in the raindrops serenely cool: 
At the touch of his finger the forest bowed,
As it shimmered and glanced in the ruffled pool,
While the rustling leaves soughed soft and low. 

          
                                                                              Gracioso!

“It was only a dream on the throbbing strings,
An echo of Nature in phantasy wrought,
A breath of her breath and a touch of her wings
From a kingdom outspread in the regions of thought. 
Below rolled the sound of the city’s din,
And the fading day, as the night drew in,
Showed the quaint old face and the pointed chin,
And the arm that was raised o’er the violin,
As the old man whispered his hope’s dead tale,
To the friend who could comfort, though others might fail,
And the chords stole hushed and low. 

          
                                                                              Pianissimo!”

He stopped, and the sheet of paper fell from his hands.

“Well,” she said, with all the eagerness of a new-born writer, “tell me, do you think them very bad?”

“Well, Angela, you know——­”

“Ah! go on now; I am ready to be crushed.  Pray don’t spare my feelings.”

“I was about to say that, thanks be to Providence, I am not a critic; but I think——­”

“Oh! yes, let me hear what you think.  You are speaking so slowly, in order to get time to invent something extra cutting.  Well, I deserve it.”

“Don’t interrupt; I was going to say that I think the piece above the average of second-class poetry, and that a few of the lines touch the first-class standard.  You have caught something of the ’divine afflatus’ that the drunken old fellow said he could not cage.  But I do not think that you will ever be popular as a writer of verses if you keep to that style; I doubt if there is a magazine in the kingdom that would take those lines unless they were by a known writer.  They would return them marked, ‘Good, but too vague for the general public.’  Magazine editors don’t like lines from ’a kingdom outspread in the regions of thought,’