Dear me! If it wasn't for All aboard! that summons of the
deaf conductor which tears one away from his half-finished sponge-cake
and coffee, how I, who do not call myself a poet, but only a questioner,
should have enjoyed a good long stop--say a couple of thousand years--at
this way-station on the great railroad leading to the unknown terminus!
--You say you are not a poet,--I said, after a little pause, in which I
suppose both of us were thinking where the great railroad would land us
after carrying us into the dark tunnel, the farther end of which no man
has seen and taken a return train to bring us news about it,--you say you
are not a poet, and yet it seems to me you have some of the elements
which go to make one.
--I don't think you mean to flatter me,--the Master answered,--and, what
is more, for I am not afraid to be honest with you, I don't think you do
flatter me. I have taken the inventory of my faculties as calmly as if I
were an appraiser. I have some of the qualities, perhaps I may say many
of the qualities, that make a man a poet, and yet I am not one. And in
the course of a pretty wide experience of men--and women--(the Master
sighed, I thought, but perhaps I was mistaken)--I have met a good many
poets who were not rhymesters and a good many rhymesters who were not
poets.
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