iality 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.

Softly the stealthy night descends,
The black sails fade into the sky:
Is this not, where the sea-line ends,
The shore-line of infinity?

I cannot think or dream: the grey
Unending waste of sea and night,
Dull, impotently infinite,
Blots out the very hope of day.

RAIN ON THE DOWN.

NIGHT, and the down by the sea,
And the veil of rain on the down;
And she came through the mist and the rain to me
From the safe warm lights of the town.

The rain shone in her hair,
And her face gleamed in the rain;
And only the night and the rain were there
As she came to me out of the rain.

BEFORE THE SQUALL.

THE wind is rising on the sea,
White flashes dance along the deep,
That moans as if uneasily
It turned in an unquiet sleep.

Ridge after rocky ridge upheaves
A toppling crest that falls in spray
Where the tormented beach receives
The buffets of the sea's wild play.

On the horizon's nearing line,
Where the sky rests, a visible wall.