"I published them
myself--no bookseller would take them, so I--I paid to have them
printed."
"And did it cost much--very much?" he enquired eagerly. "Anywhere
near, well, say--five pound?"
"A great deal nearer a hundred!"
"A hun--" he gasped. "By goles!" he ejaculated after a moment, "poetry
comes expensive, don't it? A hundred pound! Lord love me, I don't make
so much in a year! So I'll never see any o' my verses in a book, 'tis
very sure. Ah, well," said he with a profound sigh, "that won't stop
me a-thinking or a-making of 'em, will it?"
"And what do you write about?" I enquired, vastly interested.
"All sorts o' things--common things, trees an' brooks, fields an'
winding roads, and then--there's always the stars. Wrote one about 'em
this very week, if you'd care to--"
"I should," cried I eagerly. "Indeed I should!"
"Should you, friend?" said he, fumbling in a pocket of his sleeved
waistcoat. "Why, then, so you shall, though there ain't much of it,
which is p'raps just as well!"
From his pocket he brought forth a strange collection of oddments
whence he selected a crumpled wisp of paper; this he smoothed out and
bending low to the fire, read aloud as follows:
"When night comes down, where'er I be
I want no roof to shelter me;
I love to lie where I may see
The blessed stars.
"Though I am one not over-wise
They seem to me like friendly eyes That watch us kindly from the skies,
These winking stars.
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