The noisy
blasphemers of the newest Paris strike the reader as Christian
fanatics turned inside out; for all their vehemence they can never
lose the experience of their religious birth. The same thing is true
of the would-be Pagans of a milder sensuous type. The Cross prevailed
at their nativity, and has thrown its shadow over their conscience.
But in the midst of the throng there walks this plaintive poet of
the _Ionica_, the one genuine Pagan, absolutely untouched by the
traditions of the Christian past. I do not commend the fact; I merely
note it as giving a strange interest to these forlorn and unpopular
poems.
Twenty years after the publication of _Ionica_, and when that little
book had become famous among the elect, the author printed at
Cambridge a second part, without a title-page, and without
punctuation, one of the most eccentric looking pamphlets I ever
saw. The enthusiastic amateur will probably regard his collection
incomplete without _Ionica II_., but he must be prepared for a
disappointment. There is a touch of the old skill here and there, as
in such stanzas as this:
_With half a moon, and clouds rose-pink,
And water-lilies just in bud,
With iris on the river-brink,
And white weed-garlands on the mud,
And roses thin and pale as dreams,
And happy cygnets born in May,
No wonder if our country seems
Drest out for Freedom's natal day_.
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