‘J’ai tellement soif, ô mon amour, de ta bouche, Que j’y boirais en baisers le cours detourné Du Strymon, l’Araxe et le Tanaïs farouche; Et les cent méandres qui arrosent Pitané, Et l’Hermus qui prend sa source où le soleil se couche, Et toutes les claires fontaines dont abonde Gaza, Sans que ma soif s’en apaisât.’ Behind the leaders Verlaine, Mallarmé, and Moréas a troop of minor Symbolists throng, each, it is true, in his own eyes the one great poet of the band, but whose illusions of greatness do not entitle them to any special observation. Sufficient justice is dealt them if the spirit they are made of be characterized by quoting a few lines of their poetry. Jules Laforgue, ‘unique not only in his generation, but in all the republic of literature,’[145] cries: ‘Oh, how daily [_quotidienne_] is life!’ and in his poem _Pan et la Syrinx_ we come upon lines like the following: ‘O Syrinx! voyez et comprenez la Terre et la merveille de cette matinée et la circulation de la vie. Oh, vous là! et moi, ici! Oh vous! Oh, moi! Tout est dans Tout!’[146] Gustav Kahn, one of the æstheticists and philosophers of Symbolism, says in his _Nuit sur la Lande_: ‘Peace descends from thy lovely eyes like a great evening, and the borders of slow tents descend, studded with precious stones, woven of far-off beams and unknown moons.’ In German, at least, ‘borders of slow tents which descend’ is completely unintelligible nonsense. In French they are also unintelligible; but in the original their meaning becomes apparent. ‘Et des pans de tentes lentes descendent,’ the line runs, and betrays itself as pure echolalia, as a succession of similar sounds, as it were, echoing each other. Charles Vignier, ‘the beloved disciple of Verlaine,’ says to his mistress: ‘Là-bas c’est trop loin, Pauvre libellule, Reste dans ton coin Et prends des pilules... ‘Sois Edmond About Et d’humeur coulante, Sois un marabout Du Jardin des Plantes.’ Another of his poems, _Une Coupe de Thulé_, runs thus: ‘Dans une coupe de Thulé Où vient pâlir l’attrait de l’heure, Dort le sénile et dolent leurre De l’ultime rêve adulé. ‘Mais des cheveux d’argent filé Font un voile à celle qui pleure, Dans une coupe de Thulé Où s’est éteint l’attrait de l’heure. ‘Et l’on ne sait quel jubilé Célèbre une harpe mineure Que le hautain fantôme effleure D’un lucide doigt fuselé!... Dans une coupe de Thulé!’ These poems remind us so forcibly of those doggerel rhymes at which in Germany jovial students are often wont to try their skill, and which are known as ‘flowery [_lit._ blooming] nonsense,’ that, in spite of the solemn assurance of French critics, I am convinced that they were intended as a joke. If I am right in my supposition, they are really evidences, not of the mental status of Vignier, but of his readers, admirers, and critics. Louis Dumur addresses the Neva in the following manner: