Some time during the summer I produced, by request, a ballad for a Girl Guides’ Pageant on the subject of Drake’s Cannon-Ball, a local legend. It was (also by request) in the stanza of ‘Young Lochinvar’, and occupied me three days. The requestress was in raptures, but then she doesn’t know a trochee from an iambus (nor, for that matter – like de la Mare – do I).

Now with their backs to the den's mouth they sit, / Yet shoulder not all light from the dern pit.

TRINCULO (speaking about Caliban): By this light, a most perfidious and drunken / monster: when his god's asleep, he'll rob his bottle.

The waitress was at her station preparing three checks.