ATHENE. Yet he, When all the other captains had won home, Was whirled about the wilderness of foam: For the wind and the wave have driven him evermore, Mocked by the green of some receding shore. Yet over wind and wave he had his will, Blistered and buffeted, unbaffled still. Ever the snare was set, ever in vain-- The Lotus Island and the Siren strain; Through Scylla and Charybdis hath he run, Sleeplessly plunging to the setting sun. Who hath so suffered, or so far hath sailed, So much encountered, and so little quailed? Which is exactly the kind of poetry one requires for the cavern scene of a New Year's pantomime. Possibly, again, the real, true English poet is Mr. William Watson, with his tiresome mimicry of Wordsworth and his high-and-dry style of lyrical architecture. Mr. Watson is believed to have done great things, but his role now appears to be one of austere silence; he is what the old writers would have termed a costive poet. And if his _Collected Poems_ are to be the end of him, his end will not be long deferred. Or, possibly, the one and only poet our England of to-day would wish to boast is Mr. Arthur Symons. Mr. Symons writes just the kind of poetry one might expect of a versifier who, in early youth, had loved a cigarette-smoking ballet-girl, and could never bring himself to repress his passion. Here is a sample of Mr. Arthur Symons at his choicest: The feverish room and that white bed, The tumbled skirts upon a chair, The novel flung half open where Hat, hair-pins, puffs, and paints are spread. * * * * * And you, half dressed and half awake, Your slant eyes strangely watching me; And I, who watch you drowsily, With eyes that, having slept not, ache: This (need one dread? nay, dare one hope?) Will rise, a ghost of memory, if Ever again my handkerchief Is scented with White Heliotrope. No doubt, if the English continue to descend the moral Avernus at their present rate of speed, Mr. Symons will become, by sheer process of time, the representative poet of the nation. It is part of a poet's duty to look into the future, and Mr. Symons appears to have taken the next two or three generations of Englishmen by the forelock. May he have the reward which is his due!