But I recognized Grish Chunder's point of view and
sympathized with it.
"What a big black brute that was!" said Charlie, when I returned
to him. "Well, look here, I've just done a poem; did it instead of
playing dominoes after lunch. May I read it?"
"Let me read it to myself."
"Then you miss the proper expression. Besides, you always make
my things sound as if the rhymes were all wrong.
"Read it aloud, then. You're like the rest of 'em."
Charlie mouthed me his poem, and it was not much worse than the
average of his verses. He had been reading his book faithfully, but
he was not pleased when I told him that I preferred my Longfellow
undiluted with Charlie.
Then we began to go through the MS. line by line; Charlie
parrying every objection and correction with:
"Yes, that may be better, but you don't catch what I'm driving at."
Charlie was, in one way at least, very like one kind of poet.
There was a pencil scrawl at the back of the paper and "What's
that?" I said.
"Oh that's not poetry 't all. It's some rot I wrote last night before I
went to bed and it was too much bother to hunt for rhymes; so I
made it a sort of a blank verse instead.
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