Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/143

Rh sincerity! Mr. Swinburne has praised 'Thyrsis' generously and well, and here he has written its fellow. Forgetting an occasional verbal flaw, this poem passes into the company of Lycidas. The reasons why Mr. Swinburne's masterpiece should be found in an elegy, and in an elegy on Charles Baudelaire, are not far enough to seek to need expressing here. It suffices to remark that the poem is (let us, then, say it) flawless, perfect, and that its equals in our time are to be counted on the fingers of one hand. Our modern paganism has found its final expression, if not of life, then of death. Our Catullus has journeyed over many lands and seas, dark with doubt and despair, to tell us of whatsoever of good and sweet death has for us, death that is and death that will be.

Nous reconnaissons, courbés vers la terre, Que c'est la splendeur de ta face austère Qui dore la nuit de nos longs malheurs; Que la vie ailée aux mille couleurs, Dont tu n'es que l'âme, Refait par tes mains les prés et les fleurs. La rose et la femme.'

It is Gautier, it is Baudelaire himself, transfigured, passing from the shadow of life and death into the sunshine of perpetuity, that speak to us in their own tongue this sweet and magnificent trust!

And there are other poems in this book which, if