I have thought a good deal about this letter and the writer of it lately.  She seemed at first removed to a distance from all of us, but here I find myself in somewhat near relations with her.  What has surprised me more than that, however, is to find that she is becoming so much acquainted with the Register of Deeds.  Of all persons in the world, I should least have thought of him as like to be interested in her, and still less, if possible, of her fancying him.  I can only say they have been in pretty close conversation several times of late, and, if I dared to think it of so very calm and dignified a personage, I should say that her color was a little heightened after one or more of these interviews.  No! that would be too absurd!  But I begin to think nothing is absurd in the matter of the relations of the two sexes; and if this high-bred woman fancies the attentions of a piece of human machinery like this elderly individual, it is none of my business.

I have been at work on some more of the Young Astronomer’s lines.  I find less occasion for meddling with them as he grows more used to versification.  I think I could analyze the processes going on in his mind, and the conflict of instincts which he cannot in the nature of things understand.  But it is as well to give the reader a chance to find out for himself what is going on in the young man’s heart and intellect.

          Wind-clouds and star-drifts.

III

     The snows that glittered on the disk of Mars
     Have melted, and the planet’s fiery orb
     Rolls in the crimson summer of its year;
     But what to me the summer or the snow
     Of worlds that throb with life in forms unknown,
     If life indeed be theirs; I heed not these. 
     My heart is simply human; all my care
     For them whose dust is fashioned like mine own;
     These ache with cold and hunger, live in pain,
     And shake with fear of worlds more full of woe;
     There may be others worthier of my love,
     But such I know not save through these I know.

     There are two veils of language, hid beneath
     Whose sheltering folds, we dare to be ourselves;
     And not that other self which nods and smiles
     And babbles in our name; the one is Prayer,
     Lending its licensed freedom to the tongue
     That tells our sorrows and our sins to Heaven;
     The other, Verse, that throws its spangled web
     Around our naked speech and makes it bold. 
     I, whose best prayer is silence; sitting dumb
     In the great temple where I nightly serve
     Him who is throned in light, have dared to claim
     The poet’s franchise, though I may not hope
     To wear his garland; hear me while I tell
     My story in such form as poets use,
     But breathed in fitful whispers, as the wind
     Sighs and then slumbers, wakes and sighs again.