That isn't culture, you see.

Well, tra la, and if you tackle Latin, Martin, I won't have any respect for you." And all the while, interested in the discussion, Martin had been aware of an irk in it as well.

It was about studies and lessons, dealing with the rudiments of knowledge, and the schoolboyish tone of it conflicted with the big things that were stirring in him--with the grip upon life that was even then crooking his fingers like eagle's talons, with the cosmic thrills that made him ache, and with the inchoate consciousness of mastery of it all.

He likened himself to a poet, wrecked on the shores of a strange land, filled with power of beauty, stumbling and stammering and vainly trying to sing in the rough, barbaric tongue of his brethren in the new land.

And so with him.