ic of his
unequalled style depends upon it.

Sometimes as we read him, we are stirred by a dim sense of
indignation against his perpetual tone of smiling, patronising,
disenchanted, Olympian pity. The word "pity" is one of his favourite
words, and a certain kind of pity is certainly a profound element in
his mocking heart.

But it is the pity of an Olympian god, a pity that cares little for what
we call justice, a pity that refuses to take seriously the objects of his
commiseration. His clear-sighted intelligence is often pleased to toy
very plausibly with a certain species of revolutionary socialism. But,
I suppose few socialists derive much satisfaction from that
devastating piece of irony, the Isle of the Penguins; where
everything moves in circles and all ends as it began.

The glacial smile of the yawning gulf of eternal futility flickers
through all his pages. Everything is amusing. Nothing is important.
Let us eat and drink; let us be urbane and tolerant; let us walk on the
sunny side of the road; let us smell the roses on the sepulchres of the
dead gods; let us pluck the violets from the sepulchres of our dead
loves. All is equal--nothing matters. The wisest are they who play
with illusions which no longer deceive them and with the pity that
no longer hurts them. The wisest are they who answer the brutality
of Nature with the irony of Humanity. The wisest are they who read
old books, drink old wine, converse with old friends, and let the rest
go.

And yet--and yet--

There is a poem of Paul Verlaine dedicated to Anatole France which
speaks like one wounded well nigh past enduring by the voices of
the scoffers.

Ah, les Voix, mourez done, mourantes que vous etes
Sentences, mots en vain, metaphores mal faites,
Toute la rhetorique en fuite des peches,
Ah, les Voix, mourez done, mourantes que vous etes!
. . . .
Mourez parmi la voix terrible de l'Amour!
. . . .

PAUL VERLAINE

To turn suddenly to the poetry of Paul Verlaine from the mass of
modern verse is to experience something like that sensation so
admirably described by Thoreau when he came upon a sentence in
Latin or in Greek lying like a broken branch of lovely fresh greenery
across the pages of some modern book.

Verlaine more than any other European poet is responsible for the
huge revolution in poetry which has taken in recent times so many
and so surprising shapes and has deviated so far from its origi