If, as I believe, emotional thought rather than imagery is the essence of poetry, then the modern school of imagists and their French forbears among the "Parnassiens" are mistaken. Their effort comes in the end to a revival of the old thesis _ut pictura poesis_, the attempt to make poetry a vision of nature rather than an expression of the inner life. They would lead poetry away from the subjectivity of emotion into the outer object world. Now, it is indeed possible for the poet to represent nature through the images which words evoke in the mind, and these images may have significance for feeling. Their very evocation in musical language is bound to lend them some warmth of mood. Yet--as Lessing showed in his _Laocoon_, despite all the crabbed narrowness of his treatment--it is hopeless for the poet to enter into rivalry with the painter or sculptor. The colors and forms of things which the poet paints for the eye of the mind are mere shadows in comparison with those which we really see.[Footnote: The best the poet-painter can do is to express his memories of the outer world; but apart from some vivid emotion, memories are unsatisfactory in comparison with realities.] We admire the marvelous workmanship of such verses as the following of Gautier, but they leave us cold; even the melody of the language is incapable of making them warm. How poor they are beside a painting! Les femmes passent sous les arbres En martre, hermine et menu-vair Et les deesses, frileux marbres, Ont pris aussi l'abit d'hiver. La Venus Anadyomene Est en pelisse a capuchon: Flore, que la brise malmene, Plonge ses mains dans son manchon. Et pour la saison, les bergeres De Coysevox et de Coustou, Trouvant leures echarpes legeres Ont des boas autour du cou. Of course, poetic pictures can be painted--Gautier has painted them--but the standard for each art is set by what it can do uniquely well. If the poet works in the domain of the painter, we tend to judge him by the alien standards of another art, where he is bound to fall short; while if he works within his own province, we judge him by his own autonomous laws, under which he can achieve perfection. Oftentimes, confessing the inability of the image to stand alone, these poets make it into a symbol of some mood or emotional thought. Yet the image remains the chief object of the poet's care; it was clearly the first thing in his mind; the interpretation is an afterthought. The poem therefore falls into two parts--a picture and an interpretation, with little organic relation between them. Another one of Gautier's poems will serve to illustrate what I mean.[Footnote: There are some good examples of this in Baudelaire's _Fleures du Mat_. See for one,_L'Albatros_.] LES COLOMBES Sur le coteau, la-bas ou sont les tombes, Un beau palmier, comme un panache vert, Dresse sa tete, ou le soir les colombes Viennent nicher et se mettre a couvert,