wistful and fleet realities of mind. He has, but in greater degree, Verlaine's power to invest lovely frivolities with permanence; an ability Arthur Symons occasionally brushed. His Old Harp, of cassia-wood and jade stops and rose-red strings, neglected for the Ch'iang flute and the Ch'in flageolet, vibrates with a tenderness of ancient forgotten melodies beyond any evocation of the Fêtes Galantes.
The poetry of those dynasties and men, however, aside from everything else, is made timeless, for us, by the celebration of its women, the wives, the concubines, the dancers of Hantan. They were, objectively, inconceivably different from the woman of today; yet the passions, the fidelity, they inspired, a little attenuated by the dust of centuries, are precisely the same which the heart retains. The Chinese women have always served an ideal of personal beauty, of correct formality, transcending any other: in May their satins are worked with the blossoms of spring and in October with chrysanthemums. Socially they occupied the women's gardens—a position now regarded with contempt—but they were not, because of that, inferior. They dominated the masculine imagination and provided, together with music, the recompense of existence checkered by the dark squares of fate.
There are, too, as many wives praised as dancers summoned, as much constancy as there is incontinent pleasure. An emperor sends to all parts of China for wizards, hoping that they may bring back the spirit of his mistress. The General Su An, absent on service, begs the woman with whom his hair was plaited not to forget the time of their love and pride. Indeed, on the other side, in the poetry there is a marked restraint: the dancers are a stiff frieze in peacock blues and orange and gold behind the fragrant vapours of incense.
All is tranquillized, even the battle pieces are softened as though in distance, and the satire, often pungent and universal, is subdued by the realization of its uselessness. There is
