Did your mother ever tell you what Hester Gray looked like , Diana ? '' `` No ... only just that she was pretty . '' `` I 'm rather glad of that , because I can imagine what she looked like , without being hampered by facts . I think she was very slight and small , with softly curling dark hair and big , sweet , timid brown eyes , and a little wistful , pale face . '' The girls left their baskets in Hester 's garden and spent the rest of the afternoon rambling in the woods and fields surrounding it , discovering many pretty nooks and lanes . When they got hungry they had lunch in the prettiest spot of all ... on the steep bank of a gurgling brook where white birches shot up out of long feathery grasses . The girls sat down by the roots and did full justice to Anne 's dainties , even the unpoetical sandwiches being greatly appreciated by hearty , unspoiled appetites sharpened by all the fresh air and exercise they had enjoyed . Anne had brought glasses and lemonade for her guests , but for her own part drank cold brook water from a cup fashioned out of birch bark . The cup leaked , and the water tasted of earth , as brook water is apt to do in spring ; but Anne thought it more appropriate to the occasion than lemonade . `` Look do you see that poem ? '' she said suddenly , pointing . `` Where ? '' Jane and Diana stared , as if expecting to see Runic rhymes on the birch trees . `` There ... down in the brook ... that old green , mossy log with the water flowing over it in those smooth ripples that look as if they 'd been combed , and that single shaft of sunshine falling right athwart it , far down into the pool . Oh , it 's the most beautiful poem I ever saw . '' `` I should rather call it a picture , '' said Jane . `` A poem is lines and verses . '' `` Oh dear me , no . '' Anne shook her head with its fluffy wild cherry coronal positively . `` The lines and verses are only the outward garments of the poem and are no more really it than your ruffles and flounces are YOU , Jane .
The real poem is the soul within them ... and XXXXX beautiful bit is the soul of an unwritten poem .
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