The Collection (2015, Jerry eBooks) by Fredric Brown

Author:Fredric Brown [Brown, Fredric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2015-05-09T04:00:00+00:00

The Greatest Poem Ever Written

Rupert Gardin said, “Ummm.” It was the only uneloquent statement he’d made in the half-hour I’d been interviewing him. But the question I’d just asked him had been a stickler.

I remember how he inclined his huge handsome head as though giving deep thought to what he would say next. But when he spoke, it was merely to echo part of my question. “The greatest poem ever written?”

I narrowed it down for him. “The greatest poem written originally in English,” I said. “Let’s eliminate other languages and even translations.”

He nodded gravely. And thought again; his eyes closed.

I remember the awe I felt, just looking at him. I was just a cub then, and Rupert Gardin—dean of American literary critics—was my first really important interview. We sat in his hotel room, just the two of us, on a hot summer day. On the table beside him was a pitcher of iced tea, and we each held a glass. I remember the cool, smooth feel of mine.

“The greatest poem,” he murmured.

I remembered something I had forgotten, that he himself had published poetry. I added quickly, “Aside from your own poetry, Mr. Gardin.”

He waved an impatient hand. “Mine? What I have written, young man, was writ in water, in blowing sand. As ephemeral as the smoke-writing of our aborigines.”

He sighed deeply. He said, “It would be the poem by Carl Marney.”

It was my turn to think, and it didn’t do me any good. I said, “I’m afraid I don’t know it, or him.”

“I doubted that you would know his name, but it was fairly well-known for a while in the twenties. He was a very wealthy young man. His father had made a great fortune in real estate and had died while young Marney was in his teens, leaving several millions in trust. He was the only heir—an only child, and his mother had died while he was an infant.

“He went to Harvard, then to Oxford—Balliol, I believe. He’d written a volume of verse—nice stuff, very sensitive, but not up to what he was to do later. More tea?”

I nodded and held out my glass. Gardin went on talking even as he poured it. “At twenty-three, Carl Marney had everything. Youth, talent, a magnificent education, health—he was as strong as an ox—money, love, anything you can name. He had love of life, love of adventure.

“He had the love of a woman, too, and he was mad about her. She was the daughter of an English peer; he’d met her while he was at Oxford. He was engaged to her and they were to be married the next year, when she would be twenty-one. Oh, Marney knew that the girl’s father, the earl, wanted an American fortune, but the girl really loved him and that was all that mattered. He was head over heels in love with her, and if they’d married he could have spared a million to her father and never felt it.”

“They didn’t marry, though?”

“No. There was almost a year to wait before she’d be twenty-one, and they’d definitely decided to wait till then.

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