rament he
carries us back to Francois Villon, and his own passionate heart is
forever reverting to the Middle Ages as the true golden age of the
spirit he represented.

He thus sweeps aside with a gesture the great seventeenth century so
much admired by Nietzsche.

Non. Il fut gallican, ce siecle, et janseniste!
C'est vers le Moyen Age enorme et delicat,
Qu'il faudrait que mon coeur en panne naviguat,
Loin de nos jours d'esprit charnel et de chair triste.

But whatever may have been the spirit which animated Verlaine, the
fact remains that when one takes up once more this "Choix de
Poesies," "avec un portrait de l'auteur par Eugene Carriere," and
glances, in passing, at that suggestive _cinquante-septieme mille_
indicating how many others besides ourselves have, in the midst of
earthquakes and terrors, assuaged their thirst at this pure fount, one
recognises once more that the thing that we miss in this modern
welter of poetising is simply _music_--music, the first and last
necessity, music, the only authentic seal of the eternal Muses.

Directly any theory of poetry puts the chief stress upon anything
except music--whether it be the intellectual content of the verses or
their image-creating vision or their colour or their tone--one has a
right to grow suspicious.

The more subtly penetrated such music is by the magic of the poet's
personality, the richer it is in deep intimations of universal human
feeling, the greater will be its appeal. But the music must be there;
and since the thing to which it forever appeals is the unchanging
human sensibility, there must be certain eternal laws of rhythm
which no original experiments can afford to break without losing the
immortal touch.

This is all that lovers of poetry need contend for as against these
quaint and interesting modern theories. Let them prove their theories!
Let them thrill us in the old authentic manner by their "free verse"
and we will acknowledge them as true descendants of Catullus and
Keats, of Villon and Verlaine!

But they must remember that the art of poetry is the art of
heightening words by the magic of music. Colour, suggestion,
philosophy, revelation, interpretation, realism, impressionism--all
these qualities come and go as the fashion of our taste changes. One
thing alone remains, as the essential and undying spirit of all true
poetry; that it should have that "concord of sweet sounds"--let us say,
rather, that concor