difference in artistic value between a good poem about a flower in the hedge and a good poem about the scent in a sachet. I am always charmed to read beautiful poems about nature in the country. Only, personally, I prefer town to country; and in the town we have to find for ourselves, as best we may, the décor which is the town equivalent of the great natural décor of fields and hills. Here it is that artificiality comes in; and if any one sees no beauty in the effects of artificial light, in all the variable, most human, and yet most factitious town landscape, I can only pity him, and go on my own way. 

That is, if he will let me. But he tells me that one thing is right and the other is wrong; that one is good art and the other is bad; and I listen in amazement, sometimes not without impatience, wondering why an estimable personal prejudice should be thus exalted into a dogma, and uttered in the name of art. For in art there can be no prejudices, only results. If we arc to save people’s souls by the writing of verses, well and good. But if not, there is no choice but to admit an absolute freedom of choice. And if Patchouli pleases one, why not Patchouli?

 Arthur Symons. 

 London, February,1896. 

 

AT DIEPPE.

 

AFTER SUNSET.

THE sea lies quieted beneath The after-sunset flush That leaves upon the heaped grey clouds The grape’s faint purple blush.

Pale, from a little space in heaven Of delicate ivory, The sickle-moon and one gold star Look down upon the sea.

 

ON THE BEACH.

NIGHT, a grey sky, a ghostly sea, The soft beginning of the rain:  Black on the horizon, sails that wane Into the distance mistily.

The tide is rising, I can hear The soft roar broadening far along; It cries and murmurs in my car A sleepy old forgotten song.

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