Emily Climbs Read Free

words. Even the line of poetry I had made just before I asked that absurd question won’t seem half as fine when I write it down:
    “‘Where the velvet feet of darkness softly go.’
    “It
doesn’t
. Some bloom seems gone from it. And yet, while I was standing there, behind all those chattering, eating people, and
saw
darkness stealing so softly over the garden andthe hills, like a beautiful woman robed in shadows, with stars for eyes, the
flash
came and I forgot everything but that I wanted to put something of the beauty I felt into the words of my poem. When that line came into my mind it didn’t seem to me that
I
composed it at all – it seemed as if
Something Else
were trying to speak through me – and it was that
Something Else
that made the line seem wonderful – and now when it is gone the words seem flat and foolish and the picture I tried to draw in them not so wonderful after all.
    “Oh, if I could only put things into words as I
see
them! Mr. Carpenter says, ‘Strive – strive – keep on – words are your medium – make them your slaves – until they will say for you what you want them to say.’ That is true – and I do try – but it seems to me there is something
beyond
words – any words – all words – something that always escapes you when you try to grasp it – and yet leaves something in your hand which you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t reached for it.
    “I remember one day last fall when Dean and I walked over the Delectable Mountain to the woods beyond it – fir woods mostly, but with one corner of splendid old pines. We sat under them and Dean read
Peveril of the Peak
and some of Scott’s poems to me; and then he looked up into the big, plumy boughs and said,
    “‘The gods are talking in the pines – gods of the old northland – of the viking sagas. Star, do you know Emerson’s lines?’
    “And then he quoted them – I’ve remembered and loved them ever since.
    “‘The gods talk in the breath of the wold,
They talk in the shaken pine,
And they fill the reach of the old seashore
With dialogue divine;
And the poet who overhears
One random word they say
Is the fated man of men
Whom the ages must obey’
    “Oh, that ‘random word’ – that is the
Something
that escapes me. I’m always listening for it – I know I can never hear it –
my
ear isn’t attuned to it – but I am sure I hear at times a little, faint, far-off echo of it – and it makes me feel a delight that is like pain and a despair of ever being able to translate its beauty into any words I know.
    “Still, it
is
a pity I made such a goose of myself immediately after that wonderful experience.
    “If I had just floated up behind Mr. Johnson, as velvet-footedly as darkness herself, and poured his tea gracefully from Great-grandmother Murray’s silver teapot, like my shadow-woman pouring night into the white cup of Blair Valley, Aunt Elizabeth would be far better pleased with me than if I could write the most wonderful poem in the world.
    “Cousin Jimmy is so different. I recited my poem to him this evening after we had finished with the catalogue and he thought it was beautiful. (
He
couldn’t know how far it fell short of what I had seen in my mind.) Cousin Jimmy composes poetry himself. He is very clever in spots. And in other spots, where his brain was hurt when Aunt Elizabeth pushed him into our New Moon well, he isn’t
anything
. There’s just
blankness
there. So people call him simple, and Aunt Ruth dares to say he hasn’t sense enough to shoo a cat from cream. And yet if you put all his clever spots together there isn’t anybody in Blair Water has half as much real cleverness as he has – not even Mr. Carpenter. The trouble is you can’t put hisclever spots together – there are always those gaps between. But I love Cousin Jimmy and I’m never in the least afraid of him when his queer spells come on him. Everybody else is – even Aunt Elizabeth though perhaps it is remorse with