before I had done more than see little roses embroidered on the hems
of their robes, and confused, blossoming apple-boughs somewhere beyond
them, and recognized one of the company by his square, black curling
beard. I have often seen him; and one night a year ago, I asked him
questions which he answered by showing me flowers and precious stones, of
whose meaning I had no knowledge, and he seemed too perfected a soul for
any knowledge that cannot be spoken in symbol or metaphor.

Are he and his blue-robed companions, and their like, 'the Eternal
realities' of which we are the reflection 'in the vegetable glass of
nature,' or a momentary dream? To answer is to take sides in the only
controversy in which it is greatly worth taking sides, and in the only
controversy which may never be decided.

1898.

THE SYMBOLISM OF POETRY

I

'Symbolism, as seen in the writers of our day, would have no value if it
were not seen also, under one disguise or another, in every great
imaginative writer,' writes Mr. Arthur Symons in _The Symbolist Movement
in Literature_, a subtle book which I cannot praise as I would, because it
has been dedicated to me; and he goes on to show how many profound writers
have in the last few years sought for a philosophy of poetry in the
doctrine of symbolism, and how even in countries where it is almost
scandalous to seek for any philosophy of poetry, new writers are following
them in their search. We do not know what the writers of ancient times
talked of among themselves, and one bull is all that remains of
Shakespeare's talk, who was on the edge of modern times; and the
journalist is convinced, it seems, that they talked of wine and women and
politics, but never about their art, or never quite seriously about their
art. He is certain that no one, who had a philosophy of his art or a
theory of how he should write, has ever made a work of art, that people
have no imagination who do not write without forethought and afterthought
as he writes his own articles. He says this with enthusiasm, because he
has heard it at so many comfortable dinner-tables, where some one had
mentioned through carelessness, or foolish zeal, a book whose difficulty
had offended indolence, or a man who had not forgotten that beauty is an
accusation. Those formulas and generalizations, in which a hidden sergeant
has drilled the ideas of journalists and through them the ideas of all but
all the modern world, have created in