There was the 'Wreck of the Malabar', and the poem he wrote when Eliza took us to hear the Reviving Preacher, and everybody cried, and Father said it must have been the Preacher's Eloquence.

So Noel wrote: O Eloquence and what art thou?
Ay what art thou?
because we cried And everybody cried inside When they came out their eyes were red-- And it was your doing Father said.
But Noel told Alice he got the first line and a half from a book a boy at school was going to write when he had time.

Besides this there were the 'Lines on a Dead Black Beetle that was poisoned'-- O Beetle how I weep to see Thee lying on thy poor back! It is so very sad indeed.
You were so shiny and black.
I wish you were alive again But Eliza says wishing it is nonsense and a shame.
It was very good beetle poison, and there were hundreds of them lying dead--but Noel only wrote a piece of poetry for one of them.

He said he hadn't time to do them all, and the worst of it was he didn't know which one he'd written it to--so Alice couldn't bury the beetle and put the lines on its grave, though she wanted to very much.
Well, it was quite plain that there wasn't enough poetry for a book.
'We might wait a year or two,' said Noel.

'I shall be sure to make some more some time.