'Dusk, withdrawing to a single lamplight At the end of an infinite street-- He saw his ghost walk down that street for ever, And heard the eternal rhythm of his feet. And if he should reach at last that final gutter, To-day, or to-morrow, Or, maybe, after the death of himself and time; And stand at the ultimate curbstone by the stars, Above dead matches, and smears of paper, and slime; Would the secret of his desire Blossom out of the dark with a burst of fire? Or would he hear the eternal arc-lamps sputter, Only that; and see old shadows crawl; And find the stars were street lamps after all? Music, quivering to a point of silence, Drew his heart down over the edge of the world....' It is dangerous for a poet to conjure up infinities unless he has made adequate preparation for keeping them in control when they appear. We are afraid that Mr Aiken is almost a slave of the spirits he has evoked. Dostoevsky's devil wore a shabby frock-coat, and was probably managing-clerk to a solicitor at twenty-five shillings a week. Mr Aiken's incubus is, unfortunately, devoid of definition; he is protean and unsatisfactory. 'I am confused in webs and knots of scarlet Spun from the darkness; Or shuttled from the mouths of thirsty spiders. Madness for red! I devour the leaves of autumn. I tire of the green of the world. I am myself a mouth for blood....' Perhaps we do wrong to ask ourselves whether this and similar things mean, exactly, anything? Mr Aiken warns us that his intention has been to use the idea--'the impulse which sends us from one dream or ideal to another, always disillusioned, always creating for adoration some new and subtler fiction'--'as a theme upon which one might wilfully build a kind of absolute music.' But having given us so much instruction, he should have given more; he should have told us in what province of music he has been working. Are we to look for a music of verbal melody, or for a musical elaboration of an intellectual theme? We infer, partly from the assurance that 'the analogy to a musical symphony is close,' more from the absence of verbal melody, that we are to expect the elaboration of a theme. In that case the fact that we have a more definite grasp of the theme in the programme-introduction than anywhere in the poem itself points to failure. In the poem 'stars rush up and whirl and set,' 'skeletons whizz before and whistle behind,' 'sands bubble and roses shoot soft fire,' and we wonder what all the commotion is about. When there is a lull in the pandemonium we have a glimpse, not of eternity, but precisely of 1890:-- 'And he saw red roses drop apart, Each to disclose a charnel heart....