Rose dans les rayons bleus,
Dame souris trotte
Debout, paresseux!

Perhaps of all the poems he ever wrote the one most full of his
peculiar and especial atmosphere--grey and sad and cool and deep
and unlike anything else in the world--is that entitled Reversibilities;
though here again I am out of my depths as to the full significance
of this title.

Entends les pompes qui font
Le cri des chats.
Des sifflets viennent et vont
Comme en pourchas.
Ah, dans ces tristes decors
Les Dejas sont les Encors!

O les vagues Angelus!
(Qui viennent d'ou)
Vois s'allumer les Saluts
Du fond d'un trou.
Ah, dans ces mornes sejours
Les Jamais sont les Toujours!

Quels reves epouvantes
Vous grands murs blancs!
Que de sanglots repetes,
Fous ou dolents!
Ah, dans ces piteux retraits
Les Toujours sont les Jamais!

Tu meurs doucereusement,
Obscurement,
Sans qu'on veille, O coeur aimant,
Sans testament!
Ah, dans ces deuils sans rachats
Les Encors sont les Dejas!

It is perhaps because his essential kingdom is not bound by the
time-limits of any century or age but has its place in that mysterious
country beyond the margins of all change, where the dim vague
feelings of humanity take to themselves shadowy and immortal
forms and whisper and murmur of what except in music can never
be uttered, that he appeals to us so much more than other recent
poets.

In that twilight-land of delicate mystery, by those pale sea-banks
dividing what we feel from what we dream, the silvery willows of
indefinable memory bow themselves more sadly, the white poplars
of faint hope shiver more tenderly, the far-off voices of past and
future mingle with a more thrilling sweetness, than in the garish
daylight of any circumscribed time or place.

In the twilight-country over which he rules, this fragile child of the
clairvoyant senses, this uncrowned king of beggars and dreams, it
may truly and indeed seem that "les jamais sont les toujours."

His poetry is the poetry of water-colours. It is water seen through
water. It is white painted upon white. It is sad with the whispers of
falling rain. It is grey with the passage of softly-sliding mists. It is
cool and fresh with the dews of morning and of evening.

Like a leaf whirling down from one of those tremulous poplar-tree