“My head was fair
  With flaxen hair,
  And fragrant breezes, faint and rare,
  And warm with drouth
  From out the south,
  Blew all my curls across my mouth.”

The speaker’s voice, exquisitely modulated, yet resonant as the twang of a harp, now seemed of itself to draw and hold each listener; while a certain extravagance of gesticulation—­a fantastic movement of both form and feature—­seemed very near akin to fascination.  And so flowed on the curious utterance: 

  “And, cool and sweet,
  My naked feet
  Found dewy pathways through the wheat;
  And out again
  Where, down the lane,
  The dust was dimpled with the rain.”

In the pause following there was a breathlessness almost painful.  The poem went on: 

  “But yesterday
  I heard the lay
  Of summer birds, when I, as they
  With breast and wing,
  All quivering
  With life and love, could only sing.

  “My head was leant,
  Where, with it, blent
  A maiden’s, o’er her instrument;
  While all the night,
  From vale to height,
  Was filled with echoes of delight.

  “And all our dreams
  Were lit with gleams
  Of that lost land of reedy streams,
  Along whose brim
  Forever swim
  Pan’s lilies, laughing up at him.”

And still the inspired singer held rapt sway.

“It is wonderful!” I whispered, under breath.

“Of course it is!” answered my friend.  “But listen; there is more:” 

  “But yesterday!... 
  O blooms of May,
  And summer roses—­Where-away? 
  O stars above;
  And lips of love,
  And all the honeyed sweets thereof!

  “O lad and lass. 
  And orchard-pass,
  And briared lane, and daisied grass! 
  O gleam and gloom,
  And woodland bloom,
  And breezy breaths of all perfume!—­

  “No more for me
  Or mine shall be
  Thy raptures—­save in memory,—­
  No more—­no more—­
  Till through the Door
  Of Glory gleam the days of yore.”

This was the evident conclusion of the remarkable utterance, and the Professor was impetuously fluttering his hands about the subject’s upward-staring eyes, stroking his temples, and snapping his fingers in his face.

“Well,” said Sweeney, as he stood suddenly awakened, and grinning in an idiotic way, “how did the old thing work?” And it was in the consequent hilarity and loud and long applause, perhaps, that the Professor was relieved from the explanation of this rather astounding phenomenon of the idealistic workings of a purely practical brain—­or, as my impious friend scoffed the incongruity later, in a particularly withering allusion, as the “blank-blanked fallacy, don’t you know, of staying the hunger of a howling mob by feeding ’em on Spring poetry!”