I have
longed to find a man of the people, whom I could train to be the poet of
the people."
"Me, at least, you have saved, have taught, have trained! Oh that your care
had been bestowed on some more worthy object!"
"Let me, at least, then, perfect my own work. You do not--it is a sign
of your humility that you do not--appreciate the value of this rest. You
underrate at once your own powers, and the shock which they have received."
"If I must go, then, why so far? Why put you to so great expense? If you
must be generous, send me to some place nearer home--to Italy, to the coast
of Devon, or the Isle of Wight, where invalids like me are said to find all
the advantages which are so often, perhaps too hastily, sought in foreign
lands."
"No," she said, smiling; "you are my servant now, by the laws of chivalry,
and you must fulfil my quest. I have long hoped for a tropic poet; one
who should leave the routine imagery of European civilization, its meagre
scenery, and physically decrepit races, for the grandeur, the luxuriance,
the infinite and strongly-marked variety of tropic nature, the paradisiac
beauty and simplicity of tropic humanity.
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