“ The angry terrors of compassionate Heaven extend through this lower world. (The King’s) counsels and plans are crooked and bad; when will he stop (in his course)? Counsels that are good he will not follow. And those that are not good he employs. When I look at his counsels and plans, I am greatly pained.”
He laughed out loud, shut the book and returned it to the shelf.
“ ‘I am greatly pained’! Oh, my Lord!”
He searched his manuscript for his own version, and read it through with a satisfaction not devoid of smugness. A professional poet might have found, like the Chinese writer, the inevitable word, the sacred flash; but, after all, he had made the thing deadened by the learned Oxford professor live again; he had suggested some of the music and the grace of the original—enough to attr
