For the like of this one can no longer go even to Shakespeare's Sonnets. For Shakespeare was still a poet. One must now go to Mrs. Deland, who is not even that. For observe: Night has halls, and these halls are marble halls; and this marble-hailed Night is unable to stay at home, and must go forth, and accordingly she does go in full dress with her garments trailing with a right gracious sweep. And the bard not only sees the sable skirts which dangle about in fringes made phosphorescent by contact with the celestial walls of such peculiar marble, but he even hears the rustle.... And these halls with accommodating grace are changed into cool, deep cisterns from which accordingly the bard's spirit with due solemnity draws into his spirit's wide-opened mouth a draught of repose. 27. Turn from this "Hymn to Night" of thirty lines to the three lines of Pushkin in his "Reminiscence," which alone he devotes to Night:-- "When noisy day to mortals quiet grows, And upon the city's silent walls _Night's shadow half-transparent lies."_ The marble halls and the trailing garments were _ground out_ from the writer's fingers; the half-transparent shadow of the poet _came_ to the poet.... 28. After such examples of wretchedness from real giants such as Byron and Longfellow indisputably are, I do not hesitate to ask the reader for a last example to turn first to Pushkin's "Cloud," and then read Shelley's poem on the same subject:-- "I bear light shade for the leaves _when laid In their noonday dreams_. [Just _how_ are leaves thus laid?] From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, _When rocked to rest on their mother's breast_, _As she dances about in the sun."_ (Oh, good, my Shelley! one _dances_ to and fro; one cannot dance in a uniform, straightforward motion. Thy imagination never _saw_ THAT picture! Spin, whirl, rush,--yes, but _dance_?) "That orbèd maiden with white fire laden Whom mortals call the Moon _Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor_, By the midnight breezes strewn; _And wherever the beat of her unseen feet_ Which only the angels hear May have broken the woof of my tent's roof, The stars peep behind her and peer." Who has not been stirred by the sight of the fleece-like, broken clouds on a moonlight night? But who on looking up to that noble arch overhead at such a moment could _see_ it as a _floor_?... 29. I call this wretched poetry, even though other critics vociferously declare Shelley's "Cloud" to be one of the masterpieces of the English language. _De gustibus non disputandum_. The Chinese have a liking, it is said, for black teeth, and a bulb of a nose is considered a great beauty in some parts of Africa, and a human leg is considered a great delicacy by some Islanders; but....