Though Cabell is best known as a novelist, his books are liberally dotted with original verses that do duty as chapter-headings, mottoes, tail-pieces, interpolated songs and epilogues. A complete volume of his verse, _From the Hidden Way_ (1916), bore the subtitle “Being Seventy-Five Adaptations.” It purported to be paraphrases from forgotten troubadours like Allesandro de Medici, Antoine Riczi, Charles Garnier and half a dozen other obscure Parnassians. Cabell even quoted the first lines of each of their poems in the original Latin, French or Provençal. Even after the hoax was exposed, it was difficult for most readers to believe that the entire collection—names, references, first lines in the “original” and all—were the creation of Cabell, the masquerader. In _From the Hidden Way_, the romancer has added another story to that gem-studded ivory tower in which Cabell lives and escapes the modern world. Whether he echoes the mediæval ballata or the more modern rondeau, roundel and sonnet, his is an artifice solidly erected upon art. SEA-SCAPES I lie and dream in the soft warm sand; and the thunder and surge and the baffled roar Of the sea’s relentless and vain endeavors are a pleasant lullaby, here on shore. Since a little hillock screens yonder ageless, tenacious battlings (which shatter, and pass In foam and spume), I appraise, half-nodding, much sand and sky and gaunt nodding grass. And I am content to lie and dream; and I am too drowsy to rise, and see If it be worth breasting—that ocean yonder, which a little hillock hides from me. ONE END OF LOVE “It is long since we met,” she said. I answered, “Yes.” She is not fair, But very old now, and no gold Gleams in that scant gray withered hair Where once much gold was: and, I think, Not easily might one bring tears Into her eyes, which have become Like dusty glass. “’Tis thirty years,” I said. “And then the war came on Apace, and our young King had need Of men to serve him oversea Against the heathen. For their greed, Puffed up at Tunis, troubles him——” She said: “This week my son is gone To him at Paris with his men.” And then: “You never married, John?” I answered, “No.” And so we sate Musing a while. Then with his guests Came Robert; and his thin voice broke Upon my dream, with the old jests, No food for laughter now: and swore We must be friends now that our feud Was overpast.