magician. He believed in astrology, in
the spirits of the air, in elves; he was marvellously and deliciously
absurd. Incidentally he wrote some incomprehensible poems and a few
pages of harmonious prose, for, you must know, "a magician is nothing
else but a great harmonist." Here are some eight lines of the
magnificent Invocation. Let me, however, warn you, strictly between
ourselves, that my translation is execrable. I am sorry to say I am no
magician.

"O Nature, indulgent Mother, forgive! Open your arms to the son,
prodigal and weary.

"I have attempted to tear asunder the veil you have hung to conceal from
us the pain of life, and I have been wounded by the mystery. . . .
OEdipus, half way to finding the word of the enigma, young Faust,
regretting already the simple life, the life of the heart, I come back to
you repentant, reconciled, O gentle deceiver!"

THE ASCENDING EFFORT--1910

Much good paper has been lamentably wasted to prove that science has
destroyed, that it is destroying, or, some day, may destroy poetry.
Meantime, unblushing, unseen, and often unheard, the guileless poets have
gone on singing in a sweet strain. How they dare do the impossible and
virtually forbidden thing is a cause for wonder but not for legislation.
Not yet. We are at present too busy reforming the silent burglar and
planning concerts to soothe the savage breast of the yelling hooligan. As
somebody--perhaps a publisher--said lately: "Poetry is of no account now-
a-days."

But it is not totally neglected. Those persons with gold-rimmed
spectacles whose usual occupation is to spy upon the obvious have
remarked audibly (on several occasions) that poetry has so far not given
to science any acknowledgment worthy of its distinguished position in the
popular mind. Except that Tennyson looked down the throat of a foxglove,
that Erasmus Darwin wrote _The Loves of the Plants_ and a scoffer _The
Loves of the Triangles_, poets have been supposed to be indecorously
blind to the progress of science. What tribute, for instance, has poetry
paid to electricity? All I can remember on the spur of the moment is Mr.
Arthur Symons' line about arc lamps: "Hung with the globes of some
unnatural fruit."

Commerce and Manufacture praise on every hand in their not mute but
inarticulate way the glories of science. Poetry does not play its part.
Behold John Keats, skilful with the surgeon's knife; but when he writes
poetry his inspir