The Great Gilly Hopkins

The glory and the freshness of a dream.”

She stopped a minute as though to listen to her own echo.

“It is not now…,” Mr. Randolph’s velvet voice prompted her.

“It is not now as it hath been of yore:—

Turn wheresoe’er I may,

By night or day,…”

Leaning against the back of the chair, Mr. Randolph joined and with one voice they recited:

“The things which I have seen I now

can see no more.”

They continued to read that way. He would listen blissfully for a while and then join, turning her single voice into the sound of a choir.

She read:

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,…”

And then together

“But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home….”

“Trailing clouds of glory do we come.” The music of the words rolled up and burst across Gilly like waves upon a beach.

It was a long poem. Seven pages or so of small print. She couldn’t understand really what it meant. But Mr. Randolph seemed to know each word, prompting her gently if she started to stumble on an unfamiliar one, and joining her, powerfully and musically, on his own favorite lines.

They chorused the final lines:

“Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

Mr. Randolph gave a long sigh. “Thank you, thank you,” he said softly.

“She’s a handsome reader, all right.” Trotter was smiling proudly as though she might share the credit for Gilly’s talent.

The smile irritated Gilly. She was a good reader because she had set her mind to be one. The minute that damn first-grade teacher had told Mrs. Dixon that she was afraid Gilly might be “slow,” Gilly had determined to make the old parrot choke on her crackers. And she had. By Christmastime she was reading circles around the whole snotty class. Not that it made any difference. The teacher, Mrs. Gorman, had then explained very carefully to Mrs. Dixon that she had twenty-five other children to look out for and that there was no way to set up a private reading time for one individual. Gilly would just have to learn some patience and cooperation. That was all.