and wind waking into fire life's burnt-out ashes and into song the
silent lips of pain,--how clearly one seems to see it all, the long
colonnade of pines with sea and sky peeping in here and there like
a flitting of silver; the open place in the green, deep heart of
the wood with the little moss-grown altar to the old Italian god in
it; and the flowers all about, cyclamen in the shadowy places, and
the stars of the white narcissus lying like snow-flakes over the
grass, where the quick, bright-eyed lizard starts by the stone, and
the snake lies coiled lazily in the sun on the hot sand, and
overhead the gossamer floats from the branches like thin, tremulous
threads of gold,--the scene is so perfect for its motive, for
surely here, if anywhere, the real gladness of life might be
revealed to one's youth--the gladness that comes, not from the
rejection, but from the absorption, of all passion, and is like
that serene calm that dwells in the faces of the Greek statues, and
which despair and sorrow cannot touch, but intensify only.

In some such way as this we could gather up these strewn and
scattered petals of song into one perfect rose of life, and yet,
perhaps, in so doing, we might be missing the true quality of the
poems; one's real life is so often the life that one does not lead;
and beautiful poems, like threads of beautiful silks, may be woven
into many patterns and to suit many designs, all wonderful and all
different: and romantic poetry, too, is essentially the poetry of
impressions, being like that latest school of painting, the school
of Whistler and Albert Moore, in its choice of situation as opposed
to subject; in its dealing with the exceptions rather than with the
types of life; in its brief intensity; in what one might call its
fiery-coloured momentariness, it being indeed the momentary
situations of life, the momentary aspects of nature, which poetry