Again he sought inspiration from
the advertisement, and set down, without erasure, the line I had
overheard:
And threw warm gules on Madeleine's young breast.
As I remembered the original it is "fair"--a trite word--instead of
"young," and I found myself nodding approval, though I admitted that the
attempt to reproduce "its little smoke in pallid moonlight died" was a
failure.
Followed without a break ten or fifteen lines of bald prose--the naked
soul's confession of its physical yearning for its beloved--unclean as we
count uncleanliness; unwholesome, but human exceedingly; the raw material,
so it seemed to me in that hour and in that place, whence Keats wove the
twenty-sixth, seventh, and eighth stanzas of his poem. Shame I had none in
overseeing this revelation; and my fear had gone with the smoke of the
pastille.
"That's it," I murmured. "That's how it's blocked out. Go on! Ink it in,
man. Ink it in!"
Mr. Shaynor returned to broken verse wherein "loveliness" was made to
rhyme with a desire to look upon "her empty dress." He picked up a fold of
the gay, soft blanket, spread it over one hand, caressed it with infinite
tenderness, thought, muttered, traced some snatches which I could not
decipher, shut his eyes drowsily, shook his head, and dropped the stuff.
Here I found myself at fault, for I could not then see (as I do now) in
what manner a red, black, and yellow Austrian blanket coloured his dreams.
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