And there were the unusual poets ... old Matthew Prior, who wrote besides his poems, the Treaty, was it, of Utrecht?... hobnobbed with the big people of the land ... yet refused all marks of honour ... the best Latinist of the day ... at a time when Latin was the diplomatic language of Europe.

When he wasn’t hobnobbing with the aristocracy or writing treaties he was sitting in inns and drinking with teamsters ... had a long love affair with a cobbler’s wife, and married the lady after the cobbler died....

There was Skelton and his rough-running, irregular rhythmic rather than strictly metrical verses ... mad and ribald ... often tedious ... but with wild flashes of beauty interwoven through his poems ... the poem about his mistress’s sparrow ... the elegy on its death ... where he prayed God to give it the little wren of the Virgin Mary, as a wife, in heaven—­“to tread, for solas!”

And Gay, the author of many delightful fables ... who must wait still longer for his proper niche, because he showed gross levity on the subject of death and life ... he who wrote for his own epitaph: 

  “Life is a jest, and all things show it;
  I thought so once, but now I know it.”

For all those who would not keep step, who romped out of the regular procedure and wantoned by the way, picking what flowers they chose, I held feeling and sympathy.

* * * * *

The Annual, a book published by the seniors each spring, now advertised a prize for the best poem submitted by any student ... a prize of twenty-five dollars.  I had no doubt but that the prize was mine already.  Not that I had become as yet the poet I desired, but that the average level of human endeavour in any art is so low that I knew my assiduity and application and fair amount of inspiration would win.

I wrote my poem—­A Day in a Japanese Garden, ... only two lines I remember: 

  “And black cranes trailed their long legs as they flew
  Down to it, somewhere out of Heaven’s blue,”

descriptive of a little lake ... oh, yes, and two more I remember, descriptive of sunset: 

  “And Fujiyama’s far and sacred top
  Became a jewel shining in the sun.”

The poem was an over-laquered, metaphor-cloyed thing ... much like the bulk of our free verse of to-day ... but it was superior to all the rest of the contributions.

The prize was declared off.  After an evening’s serious discussion the committee decided that, though my effort was far and away the best, it would not do to let me have the prize, because I was so wild-appearing ... because I was known as having been a tramp.  And because seniors and students of correct standing at the university had tried.  And it would not be good for the school morale to let me have what I had won.

They compromised by declaring the prize off.

A year after, Professor Black, assistant professor in English literature, who served on the judging board, told me confidentially of this ... though he declared that he had fought for me, alleging how I needed the money, and how I had honestly won the award.