'Je suis une autre personne que l'enfant dont je parle. Nous n'avons
plus en commun, lui et moi, un atome de substance ni de pensee.
Maintenant qu'il m'est devenu tout a fait etranger, je puis en sa
compagnie me distraire de la mienne. Je l'aime, moi qui ne m'aime ni
ne me hais. Il m'est doux de vivre en pensee les jours qu'il vivait
et je souffre de respirer l'air du temps ou nous sommes.'
Not otherwise is it with us and Anatole France. We may have little in
common with his thought--the community we often imagine comes of
self-deception--but it is sweet for us to inhabit his mind for a while.
His touch is potent to soothe our fitful fevers.
[APRIL, 1919.
_Gerard Manley Hopkins_
Modern poetry, like the modern consciousness of which it is the epitome,
seems to stand irresolute at a crossways with no signpost. It is hardly
conscious of its own indecision, which it manages to conceal from itself
by insisting that it is lyrical, whereas it is merely impressionist. The
value of impressions depends upon the quality of the mind which receives
and renders them, and to be lyrical demands at least as firm a temper of
the mind, as definite and unfaltering a general direction, as to be
epic.
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