It was clear that Tom did not understand the sonnet at first; and I was not in the least certain that he would come to understand it by any exertion of his intellect, without further experience.  But what I was delighted to be made sure of was that Tom at least knew that he did not know.  For that is the very next step to knowing.  Indeed, it may be said to be a more valuable gift than the other, being of general application; for some quick people will understand many things very easily, but when they come to a thing that is beyond their present reach, will fancy they see a meaning in it, or invent one, or even—­which is far worse—­pronounce it nonsense; and, indeed, show themselves capable of any device for getting out of the difficulty, except seeing and confessing to themselves that they are not able to understand it.  Possibly this sonnet might be beyond Tom now, but, at least, there was great hope that he saw, or believed, that there must be something beyond him in it.  I only hoped that he would not fall upon some wrong interpretation, seeing he was brooding over it so long.

“Well, Tom,” I said, “have you made it out?”

“I can’t say I have, sir.  I’m afraid I’m very stupid, for I’ve tried hard.  I must just ask you to tell me what it means.  But I must tell you one thing, sir:  every time I read it over—­twenty times, I daresay—­I thought I was lying on my mother’s grave, as I lay that terrible night; and then at the end there you were standing over me and saying, ‘Can I do anything to help you?’”

I was struck with astonishment.  For here, in a wonderful manner, I saw the imagination outrunning the intellect, and manifesting to the heart what the brain could not yet understand.  It indicated undeveloped gifts of a far higher nature than those belonging to the mere power of understanding alone.  For there was a hidden sympathy of the deepest kind between the life experience of the lad, and the embodiment of such life experience on the part of the poet.  But he went on: 

“I am sure, sir, I ought to have been at my prayers, then, but I wasn’t; so I didn’t deserve you to come.  But don’t you think God is sometimes better to us than we deserve?”

“He is just everything to us, Tom; and we don’t and can’t deserve anything.  Now I will try to explain the sonnet to you.”

I had always had an impulse to teach; not for the teaching’s sake, for that, regarded as the attempt to fill skulls with knowledge, had always been to me a desolate dreariness; but the moment I saw a sign of hunger, an indication of readiness to receive, I was invariably seized with a kind of passion for giving.  I now proceeded to explain the sonnet.  Having done so, nearly as well as I could, Tom said: 

“It is very strange, sir; but now that I have heard you say what the poem means, I feel as if I had known it all the time, though I could not say it.”