It is a slight and shadowy thing, of no elaborate construction, --simply a rendering of the impression produced upon the mind by sunset and water; by willows and water-fowl and water-lilies. A slight thing enough; but in some mysterious way it seems to blend with all those vague feelings which are half memories and half intimations of something beyond memory, which float round the margins of all human minds. We have seen these shadowy willows, that dying sunset; we have heard the wail of those melancholy water-fowl; somewhere--far from here--in some previous incarnation perhaps, or in the "dim backward" of pre-natal dreaming. It all comes back to us as we give ourselves up to the whispered cadences of this faint sweet music; while those reiterated syllables about "the great water-lilies among the rushes" fall upon us like a dirge, like a requiem, like the wistful voice of what we have loved--once--long ago--touching us suddenly with a pang that is well-nigh more than we can bear. Le couchant dardait ses rayons suprêmes Et le vent berçait les nénuphars blêmes; Les grands nénuphars entre les roseaux Tristement luisaient sur les calmes eaux. Moi, j'errais tout seul, promenant ma plaie Au long de l'étang, parmi la saulaie Où la brume vague évoquait un grand Fantôme laiteux se désespérant Et pleurant avec la voix des sarcelles Qui se rappelaient en battant des ailes Parmi la saulaie où j'errais tout seul Promenant ma plaie; et l'épais linceul Des ténèbres vint noyer les suprêmes Rayons du couchant dans ses ondes blêmes Et des nénuphars parmi les roseaux Des grands nénuphars sur les calmes eaux. Verlaine is one of those great original poets the thought of whose wistful evocations coming suddenly upon us when we are troubled and vexed by the howl of life's wolves, becomes an incredible mandragora of healing music. I can remember drifting once, in one of those misty spring twilights, when even the streets of Paris leave one restless, dissatisfied and feverishly unquiet, into the gardens of the Luxembourg. There is a statue there of Verlaine accentuating all the extravagance of that extraordinary visage--the visage of a satyr-saint, a "ragamuffin angel," a tatterdemalion scholar, an inspired derelict, a scaramouch god,--and I recollect how, in its marble whiteness, the thing leered and peered at me with a look that seemed to have about it all the fragrance of all the lilac-blossoms in the world, mixed with all the piety of all our race's children and the wantonness of all old heathen dreams. It is like Socrates, that head; and like a gargoyle on the tower of Notre Dame. He ought to have been one of those slaves of Joseph of Arimathea, who carried the body of Our Lord from the cross to the rich man's tomb--a slave with the physiognomy of the god Pan--shedding tears, like a broken-hearted child, over the wounded flesh of the Saviour.