A mist settled on my eyes.
"Read,"-- cried the master, waving his ferula with a commanding gesture,--"our time is precious." I opened my lips, but no sound issued from my paralyzed tongue.

With a feeling of horror, which the intensely diffident can understand, and only they, I turned and was about to fly back to my seat, when a large, strong hand pressed its weight upon my shoulder, and arrested my flight.
"Stay where you are," exclaimed Mr.Regulus.

"Have I not lectured you a hundred times on this preposterous shame-facedness of yours?
Am I a Draco, with laws written in blood, a tyrant, scourging with an iron rod, that you thus shrink and tremble before me?
Read, or suffer the penalty due to disobedience and waywardness." Thus threatened, I commenced in a husky, faltering voice the reading of lines which, till that moment, I had believed glowing with the inspiration of genius.

Now, how flat and commonplace they seemed! It was the first time I had ever ventured to reveal to others the talent hidden with all a miser's vigilance in my bosom casket.

I had lisped in rhyme,--I had improvised in rhyme,--I had dreamed in poetry, when the moon and stars were looking down on me with benignant lustre;--I had _thought_ poetry at the sunset hour, amid twilight shadows and midnight darkness.