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The boy stopped and fixed his eyes on me. “I don’t suppose that you happen to be a poet?”

“Not at all,” I replied. “But perhaps you are one. Tell me about it!”

The boy took a turn at the fire with the poker, but it was chiefly in embarrassment. Presently he returned to his chair. He stretched his long arms upward above his head.

“No, I’m not,” he said. “And yet sometimes I think that I have a kind of poetry in me. Only I can’t get it into words. I lay thinking about that, too, on the hillside. There was a wind above my head, and I thought that I could almost put words to the tune. But I have never written a single poem. Yet, goodness me, what thoughts I have! But they aren’t real thoughts–what you would regularly call thoughts. Things go racing and tingling in my head, but I can never get them down. They are just feelings.”

As he spoke, the boy gazed intently through the chimney bricks out into another world. The fireplace was its portal and he seemed to wait for the fires to cool before entering into its possession. It was several moments before he spoke again.

“I don’t want you to think me ridiculous, but so few understand. If only I could master the tools! Perhaps my thoughts are old, but they come to me with such freshness and they are so unexpected. Could I only solve the frets and spaces inside me here, I could play what tune I chose. But my feelings are cold and stale before I can get them into thoughts. I have no doubt, however, that they are just as real as those other feelings that in time, after much scratching, get into final form and become poetry. I know of course that a man’s reach should exceed his grasp–it’s hackneyed enough–but just for once I would like to pull down something when I have been up on tiptoe for a while.

“Sometimes I get an impression of pity–a glance up a dark hallway–an old woman with a shawl upon her head–a white face at a window–a blind fiddler in the street–but the impression is gone in a moment. Or a touch of beauty gets me. It may be nothing but a street organ in the spring. Perhaps you like street organs, too?”

“I do, indeed!” I cried. “There was one today outside my window and my feet kept wiggling to it.”

The boy clapped his hands. “I knew that you would be like that. I hoped for it on the hill. As for me, when I hear one, I’m so glad that I could cry out. In its lilt there is the rhythm of life. It moves me more than a hillside with its earliest flowers. Am I absurd? It is equal to the pipe of birds, to shallow waters and the sound of wind to stir me to thoughts of April. Today as I came downtown, I saw several merry fellows dancing on the curb. There are tunes, too, upon the piano that send me off. I play a little myself. I see you have a piano. Do you still play?”

“A little, rather sadly,” I replied.

“That’s too bad, but perhaps you sing?”

“Even worse.”

“Dear me, that’s too bad. I have rather a voice myself. Well, as I was saying, when I hear those tunes, I curl up with the smoke and blow forth from the chimney. If I walk upon the street when the wind is up, and see a light fleece of smoke coming from a chimney top, I think that down below someone is listening to music that he likes, and that his thoughts ride upon the night, like those white streamers of smoke. And then I think of castles and mountains and high places and the sounds of storm. Or in fancy I see a tower that tapers to the moon with a silver gleam upon it.”