would like to think
so--but while echo or mirror can repeat for us a beautiful thing, to
render artistically a thing that is ugly requires the most exquisite
alchemy of form, the most subtle magic of transformation. To me there is
more of the cry of Marsyas than of the singing of Apollo in the earlier
poems of Mr. Henley's volume, _In Hospital_: _Rhymes and Rhythms_, as he
calls them. But it is impossible to deny their power. Some of them are
like bright, vivid pastels; others like charcoal drawings, with dull
blacks and murky whites; others like etchings with deeply-bitten lines,
and abrupt contrasts, and clever colour-suggestions. In fact, they are
like anything and everything, except perfected poems--that they certainly
are not. They are still in the twilight. They are preludes,
experiments, inspired jottings in a note-book, and should be heralded by
a design of 'Genius Making Sketches.' Rhyme gives architecture as well
as melody to verse; it gives that delightful sense of limitation which in
all the arts is so pleasurable, and is, indeed, one of the secrets of
perfection; it will whisper, as a French critic has said, 'things
unexpected and charming, things with strange and remote relations to each
other,' and bind them together in indissoluble bonds of beauty; and in
his constant rejection of rhyme, Mr. Henley seems to me to have abdicated
half his power. He is a _roi en exil_ who has thrown away some of the
strings of his lute; a poet who has forgotten the fairest part of his
kingdom.

However, all work criticizes itself. Here is one of Mr. Henley's
inspired jottings. According to the temperament of the reader, it will
serve either as a model or as the reverse:

As with varnish red and glistening
Dripped his hair; his feet were rigid;
Raised, he settled stiffly sideways:
You could see the hurts were spinal.

He had fallen from an engine,
And been dragged along the metals.
It was hopeless, and they knew it;
So they covered him, and left him.

As he lay, by fits half sentient,
Inarticulately moaning,
With his stockinged feet protruded
Sharp and awkward from the blankets,

To his bed there came a woman,
Stood and looked and sighed a little,
And departed without speaking,
As himself a few hours after.

I was told she was his sweetheart.
They were on the eve of marriage.
She was q