DEVELOPMENT.

["Even a colour-sense is more important in the development of the individual than a sense of right and wrong."—OSCAR WILDE.]

If you're anxious to develop to a true hedonic "swell," hop on a pinnacle apart,

Like a monkey on a stick, and your phrases quaintly pick, and then prattle about Art.

Take some laboured paradoxes, and, like Samson's flaming foxes, let them loose amidst the corn

(Or the honest commonplaces) of the Philistines whose graces you regard with lofty scorn.

And every one will say,

As you squirm your wormy way,

"If this young man expresses himself in terms that stagger me,

What a very singularly smart young man this smart young man must be!"

You may be a flabby fellow, and lymphatically yellow, that will matter not a mite.

If you take yourself in hand, in a way you'll understand, to become a Son of Light.

On your crassness superimposing the peculiar art of glosing in sleek phrases about Sin.

If you aim to be a Shocker, carnal theories to cocker is the best way to begin.

And every one will say,

As you worm your wicked way,

"If that's allowable for him which were criminal in me,

What a very emancipated kind of youth this kind of youth must be."

Human virtues you'll abhor all, and be down upon the Moral in uncompromising style.

Your critical analysis will reduce to prompt paralysis every motor that's not vile.

You will show there's naught save virtue that can seriously hurt you, or your liberty enmesh;

And you'll find excitement, plenty, in Art's dolce far niente, with a flavour of the flesh.

And every one will say,

As you lounge your upward way,

"If he's content with a do-nothing life, which would certainly not suit me.

What a most particularly subtle young man this subtle young man must be!"

Then having swamped morality in "intensified personality" (which, of course, must mean your own),

And the "rational" abolished and "sincerity" demolished, you will find that you have grown

With a "colour-sense" fresh handselled (whilst the moral ditto's cancelled) you'll develop into—well,

What Philistia's fools malicious might esteem a vaurien vicious (alias "hedonic swell").

And every one will say,

As you writhe your sinuous way.

"If the highest result of the true 'Development' is decomposition, why see

What a very perfectly developed young man this developed young man must be."

With your perky paradoxes, and your talk of "crinkled ox-eyes," and of books in "Nile-green skin."

That show forth unholy histories, and display the "deeper mysteries" of strange and subtle Sin.

You can squirm, and glose, and hiss on, and awake that nouveau frisson which is Art's best gift to life.

And "develop"—like some cancer (in the Art-sphere) whose best answer is the silent surgeon's knife!

And every man will say,

As you wriggle on your way,

"If 'emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of Art,' dear me!

What a morbidly muckily emotional young man the 'developed' young man must be!"