'No. I found a title, at last. But I shan't tell you what it is,' as
though I had been so impertinent as to inquire. 'I am not sure that
it wholly satisfies me. But it is the best I can find. It suggests
something of the quality of the poems.... Strange growths, natural and
wild, yet exquisite,' he added, 'and many-hued, and full of poisons.'

I asked him what he thought of Baudelaire. He uttered the snort that
was his laugh, and 'Baudelaire,' he said, 'was a bourgeois malgre lui.'
France had had only one poet: Villon; 'and two-thirds of Villon were
sheer journalism.' Verlaine was 'an epicier malgre lui.' Altogether,
rather to my surprise, he rated French literature lower than English.
There were 'passages' in Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. But 'I,' he summed up,
'owe nothing to France.' He nodded at me. 'You'll see,' he predicted.

I did not, when the time came, quite see that. I thought the author of
'Fungoids' did--unconsciously, of course--owe something to the young
Parisian decadents, or to the young English ones who owed something to
THEM. I still think so. The little book--bought by me in Oxford--lies
before me as I write. Its pale grey buckram cover and silver lettering
have not worn well. Nor have its contents. Through these, with a
melancholy interest, I have again been looking. They are not much. But
at the time of their publication I had a vague suspicion that they MIGHT
be. I suppose it is my capacity for faith, not poor Soames' work, that
is weaker than it once was....

TO A YOUNG WOMAN.

Thou art, who hast not been!
Pale tunes irresolute
And traceries of old sounds
Blown from a rotted flute
Mingle with noise of cymbals rouged with rust,
Nor not strange forms and epicene
Lie bleeding in the dust,
Being wounded with wounds.

For this it is
That in thy counterpart
Of age-long mockeries
Thou hast not been nor art!

There seemed to me a certain inconsistency as between the first and last
lines of this. I tried, with bent brows, to resolve the discord. But I
did not take my failure as wholly incompatible with a meaning in Soames'
mind. Might it not rather indicate the depth of his meaning? As for the
craftsmanship, 'rouged with rust' seemed to me a fine stroke, and 'nor
not' instead of 'and' had a curious felicity. I wondered who the Young
Woman was, and what she had made of it al