shows De Régnier in a new light, and is a notable poem. Here we have at last a soul set free from its masters. Miss Lowell says:
Admitting him to be, in poetry, the voice of a vanishing quarter of a century, he is still the greatest French poet alive to-day, and one of the greatest poets that France has ever had,
Francis Jammes, more than any other of these six poets, compels our love. For he loves animals, birds, insects, trees—loves them with kindness, compassion, understanding. And he loves periwinkles! He is distinctly a modern, and his works, far from recording the graceful writhings of pain, are voices of serenity. Sometimes his language might be called, by the undiscriminating, childish. This is because his words, not childish at all, are but clothed with the delicate shades of young spring. Nevertheless, in sweetness and simplicity his mind is akin to that of a child. "Francis Jammes is a charming child on one side," says Miss Lowell, "and a most lovable genius on the other. But a man of mature and balanced intellect he certainly is not." She goes on to say that he is still in the prime of life, and that he has had a powerful effect upon the younger generation.
Paul Fort, like Jammes, sets his heart to the sun. He writes mostly in the Alexandrine, and he prints his poems as prose, the rhymes becoming evident only when read. I refrain from quoting him, as there are so many riches that I do not know where to choose. Besides, one should discover for oneself Joachim, La Fille Morte dans ses Amours, Las Baisers, a delicious little poem, and the great poem, Henri III, which Miss Lowell calls his masterpiece.
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