“The Southern lyre has been but lightly swept so far, Miss Harz,” he continued, a moment later, “and only by the fingers of love; we need Bellona to give tone to our orchestra.”

I could not forbear reciting somewhat derisively the old couplet—­

  “’Sound the trumpet, teat the drum,
  Tremble France, we come, we come!’

“Is that the style Major Favraud?” I asked.  “I remember the time when I thought these two lines the most soul-stirring in the language—­they seem very bombastic now, in my maturity.”

He smiled, and said:  “The time is not come for our war-poem, and, as for love, let me give you one strain of Pinckney’s to begin with;” and, without waiting for permission, he recited the beautiful “Pledge,” with which all readers are now familiar, little known then, however, beyond the limits of the South, and entirely new to me, beginning with—­

  “I fill this cup to one made up
    Of loveliness alone,
  A woman of her gentle sex
    The seeming paragon”—­

continuing to the end with eloquence and spirit.

“Now, that is poetry, Miss Harz! the real afflatus is there; the bead on the wine; the dew on the rose; the bloom on the grape!  Nothing wanting that constitutes the indefinable divine thing called genius!  You understand my idea, of course; explanations are superfluous.”

I assented mutely, scarce knowing why I did so.

“Now, hear another.”  And the woods rang with his clear, sonorous accents as he declaimed, a little too scanningly, perhaps—­too much like an enthusiastic boy: 

  “Love lurks upon my lady’s lip,
    His bow is figured there;
  Within her eyes his arrows sleep;
    His fetters are—­her hair!”

“I call that nothing but a bundle of conceits, Major Favraud, mostly of the days of Charles II., of Rochester himself—­” interrupting him as I in turn was interrupted.

“But hear further,” and he proceeded to the end of that marvelous ebullition of foam and fervor, such as celebrated the birth of Aphrodite herself perchance in the old Greek time; and which, despite my perverse intentions, stirred me as if I had quaffed a draught of pink champagne.  Is it not, indeed, all couleur de rose?  Hear this bit of melody, my reader, sitting in supreme judgment, and perhaps contempt, on your throne apart: 

  “’Upon her cheek the crimson ray
    By changes comes and goes,
  As rosy-hued Aurora’s play
    Along the polar snows;
  Gay as the insect-bird that sips
    From scented flowers the dew—­
  Pure as the snowy swan that dips
    Its wings in waters blue;
  Sweet thoughts are mirrored on her face,
    Like clouds on the calm sea,
  And every motion is a grace,
    Each word a melody!’”

“Yes, that is true poetry, I acknowledge, Major Favraud,” I exclaimed, not at all humbled by conviction, though a little annoyed at the pointed manner in which he gave (looking in my face as he did so) these concluding lines: