This poem of twenty-four leaves is doubtless the most delicious little book of love verses given us since the _Fêtes Galantes_, and with the _Chansons d'amant_ are perhaps the only verses of these last years where sentiment dare confess in utter frankness, with the perfect and touching grace of divine sincerity. If, in some of these pages, there still remains a touch of rhetoric, it is because Kahn, even at the feet of the Sulamite, has not renounced the pleasure of surprising by the ever novel deftness of the jongleur and virtuoso, and if he sometimes treats the French language tyrannically, it is that for him she has always had the affectionate yieldings of a slave. He abuses his power a little, giving some words meanings that hang on the skirts of others, making phrases yield to a too summary syntax, but these are mischievous habits not exclusively personal to him. His science of rhythm and mastery in wielding free verse, he borrows from no one. Was Kahn the first? To whom do we owe free verse? To Rimbaud, whose _Illuminations_ appeared in _Vogue_ in 1886, to Laforgue, who at the same period, in the same precious little review,--conducted by Kahn--published _Légende_ and _Solo de lune_, and, finally, to Kahn himself; at that time he wrote: Void l'allégresse des âmes d'automne, La Ville s'évapore en illusions proches, Void se voiler de violet et d'orangé les porches De la nuit sans lune Princesse, qu'as tu fait de ta tiare orfévrée? (Tr. 60) --and particularly to Walt Whitman, whose majestic license was then beginning to be appreciated. How joyfully this tiny _Vogue_, which today sells at the price of miniature parchments, was read under the galleries of the Odéon by timid youths drunk with the odor of novelty which these pale little pages exhaled. Kahn's last collection, _la Pluie et le Beau temps_, has not changed our opinion of his talent and originality: he remains equal to himself with his two tendencies, here less in harmony, towards sentiment and the picturesque, quite apparent if one compares with _Image_, that so mournful hymn, O Jésus couronné de ronces, Qui saigne en tous coeurs meurtris, (Tr. 61) the _Dialogue de Zélanae_, Bonjour mynher, bonjour myffrau, (Tr. 62) as pretty and sweet as some old almanac print. Here, in the middle tone, is a truly faultless lied: L'heure du nuage blanc s'est fondue sur la plaine En reflets de sang, en flocons de laine, O bruyères roses, ô ciel couleur de sang. L'heure du nuage d'or a pâli sur la plaine, Et tombent des voiles lents et longs de blanche laine O bruyères mauves--ô ciel couleur de sang. L'heure du nuage d'or a crevé sur la plaine, Les roseaux chantaient doux sous le vent de haine, O bruyères rouges--ô ciel couleur de sang. L'heure du nuage d'or a passé sur la plaine Ephémèrement: sa splendeur est lointaine, O bruyère d'or--ô ciel couleur de sang. (Tr. 63)