62

A Wision of Judgment

Revealed to the Minor English class.

(Being a prose version of a well-known poem—supplemented by the notes of an
equally well-known personage.)

T was really most awfully dull. The little circle of “romantic poets”’ felt their
heads nodding hopelessly in their hands. Wordsworth, who had one of his
apoplectic headaches again, stroked his long white wings reflectively, and

thought of France. It was indeed emotion recollected in tranquility. Only Lord
Byron, who was afraid of getting fat, danced about in an eighteenth century
manner.

Suddenly the gates burst asunder. Somebody seemed to be waiting to get in.

“Hope it’s a Young Ladies’ Boarding School,’’ cried Shelley, as though waking
from a dream.

“Hope she’s pretty,” said Byron, poking playfully among Wordsworth’s ribs.

“Well, she won’t be,’ answered Wordsworth crossly.

“She'll be old and have swollen ankles.”

“Oh, mercy to myself, I cried,
If Lucy should be dead.”
he added irrelevantly, lapsing again into oblivion.

At this point the newcomer appeared.

“What a very strange coincidence,” said Wordsworth, looking rather startled.

The newcomer wore an academic robe, and swayed ever so slightly from side
to side. Her hair was gray, parted in the middle, and from her general demeanor
she might have been termed an English woman.

“Well,” said St. Peter, who walked behind, carrying the rusty keys, “here they
are; but they don’t seem to know you.”

The newcomer put her hand to her head and patted her hair. Her feelings of
disappointment were obviously too poignant to be expressed.

Byron, to whom courtesy was law, extended his hand, but though the new-
comer forced a smile to her lips, she hid in a startled manner behind St. Peter’s
skirts. (She had once known a lady who had been acquainted with Mr. Byron.)

Finally, after not a little hesitation, during which she seemed to find difficulty
in putting her thoughts into words. she went up to Shelley, whose big eyes she
found very charming.

““He must know me,” she said.

But Shelley had already lapsed into another transport.

“He must know me,” she whispered awefully, pulling Wordsworth by the
sleeve. But he had begun to write a sonnet about a forsaken washerwoman,
whose very wash-tub had deserted her.*

Suddenly there appeared another figure in the offing, carrying a suit-case.

“That,” said St. Peter, “is Southey on his way to hell. He is truly romantic,
and is therefore about to flee.”

The newcomer brightened. ‘Perhaps he will take me along,” she said.

Something miraculous made Southey turn around as she uttered these words.
(She had recently praised those works of his.)

“Come,” he called. And together they slipped out through the gates.

Mitprep VoorRHEES.
* Note.—See Minor English Notes for the value of the Tub in poetry.