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 166 in the cloudy lyrics of Verlaine, we catch again and again this murmur of poignant but subdued regret, this sigh for the light love that has so swiftly fled. The delicacy of the sentiment is unmatched in English song. The Saxon can be profoundly sad, and he can—or at least he could—be ringingly and recklessly gay; but the mood which is neither sad nor gay, which is fed by refined emotions, and tranquillized by time's subduing touch, has been expressed oftener and better in France. Four hundred and fifty years ago François Villon touched this exquisite chord in his "Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis," and it has vibrated gently ever since. We hear it echoing with melancholy grace in these simple lines of Gérard de Nerval:—

Nerval, like Villon, had drunk deep of the bitterness of life, but he never permitted its dregs to pollute the clearness of his song:—