Page:The symbolist movement in literature, (IA symbolistmovemen01symo).pdf/103

Respecte dans la bête un esprit agissant:Chaque fleur est une à la Nature éclose;Un mystère d'amour dans le métal repose;"Tout est sensible!" Et tout sur ton être est puissant.

Crains, dans le mur aveugle, un regard qui t'épie!A la matière même un verbe est attaché . . .Ne la fais pas servir à quelque usage impie!

Souvent dans l'être obscur habite un Dieu caché;Et comme un œil naissant couvert pas ses paupières,Un pur esprit s'accroit sous l'écorce des pierres!

But in the other sonnets, in Artémis, which I have quoted, in El Desdichado, Myrtho, and the rest, he would seem to be deliberately obscure; or at least, his obscurity results, to some extent, from the state of mind which he describes in Le Rêve et la Vie: "I then saw, vaguely drifting into form, plastic images of antiquity, which outlined themselves, became definite, and seemed to represent symbols, of which I only seized the idea with difficulty." Nothing could more precisely represent the impression made by these sonnets, in which, for the first time in French, words are used as the ingredients of an evocation, as themselves not merely colour and sound, but symbol. Here are words which create an atmosphere by the actual suggestive quality of their