wn to
deliberate reverie, as an opium smoker gives himself up to his dream. I
savoured the bitter-sweetness of my memories; I took a strange pleasure
in stimulating the ache of my heart with vividly recalled pictures of
innumerable dead hours. I systematically passed from table to table all
around that spacious peristyle. There was scarcely one at which I
had not sat with some vanished companion in those years of ardent,
irresponsible living which could never come again. Not always a woman
had been the companion whose form I thus conjured out of the past, too
often out of the grave; for the noble friendship of youth haunted those
tables as well, with its generous starry-eyed enthusiasms and passionate
loyalties. Poets of whom but their songs remain, themselves by tragic
pathways descended into the hollow land, had read their verses to me
there, still glittering with the dawn dew of their creation, as we sat
together over the wine and talked of the only matters then--and perhaps
even yet--worth talking of: love and literature. Of these but one can
still be met in London streets, but all now wear crowns of varying
brightness--

Where the oldest bard is as the young,
And the pipe is ever dropping honey,
And the lyre's strings are ever strung.

Dear boon fellows of life as well as literature, how often have we risen
from those tables, to pursue together the not too swiftly flying
petticoat, through the terrestrial firmament of shining streets, aglow
with the midnight sun of pleasure, a-dazzle with eyes brighter far than
the city lamps--passionate pilgrims of the morning star! Ah! we go on
such quests no more--"another race hath been and other palms are won."

No, not always women--but naturally women nearly always, for it was the
time of rosebuds, and we were wisely gathering them while we might--

Through the many to the one--
O so many!
Kissing all and missing none,
Loving any.

Every man who has lived a life worthy the name of living has his own
private dream of fair women, the memory of whom is as a provision laid
up against the lean years that must come at last, however long they may
be postponed by some special grace of the gods, which is, it is good to
remember, granted to some--the years when one has reluctantly to
accept that the lovely game is almost, if not quite at an end, and to
watch the bloom and abundance of fragrant young c