Page:French Poets and Novelists.djvu/63

50 pictorial and plastic—a matter of images, "effects," and colour. Even when the motive is an idea—of course, a slender one—the image absorbs and swallows it, and the poem becomes a piece of rhythmic imitat on What is this delightful little sonnet—the "Pot de Fleurs"—but a piece of self-amused imagery?

We may almost fancy that the whole sonnet was written for the sake of the charming line we have marked—a bit of Keats Gallicized. Gautier's first and richest poetry, however, is to be found in his prose—the precious, artistic prose which for forty years he