something to the young Parisian decadents, or to the young
English ones who owed something to THEM. I still think so.
The little book--bought by me in Oxford--lies before me as I
write. Its pale grey buckram cover and silver lettering have not
worn well. Nor have its contents. Through these, with a
melancholy interest, I have again been looking. They are not
much. But at the time of their publication I had a vague
suspicion that they MIGHT be. I suppose it is my capacity for
faith, not poor Soames' work, that is weaker than it once was....


TO A YOUNG WOMAN.

Thou art, who hast not been!
Pale tunes irresolute
And traceries of old sounds
Blown from a rotted flute
Mingle with noise of cymbals rouged with rust,
Nor not strange forms and epicene
Lie bleeding in the dust,
Being wounded with wounds.

For this it is
That in thy counterpart
Of age-long mockeries
Thou hast not been nor art!


There seemed to me a certain inconsistency as between the first
and last lines of this. I tried, with bent brows, to resolve the