“No,” you answer lazily, wisely, “I should be distinctly annoyed with anyone who plucked my sleeve when I was busy, no matter how many hyacinths he might wish to call to my attention. No, the true sense of beauty thrives only where it is not watched. Unfortunately it becomes self-conscious far too easily. And then, of course, one becomes articulate ... after he has lost his reason for speech.... Ah,” with a wistful little smile, “I’m mawkish today. You mustn’t start me off, my dear. Look at the tender color on the sky and stop thinking. I’ll read to you. Something decadent. Here.
White clouds are in the sky.
Blue shadows of the hills
Between us two must lie.
The road is rough and far.
Deep fords between us are.
I pray you not to die.”
She says nothing; she does not even sigh. She looks at you and waits.
“Ah, youth, youth! The beautiful simplicity, the terrible complexity of inexperience. Straight, clean.... I have lost the gift. I cannot read that poetry. Give me the sophisticated; the keen irony of Eliot; the ponderous exaltation of the negroes....”
“Of course,” she says, in a rather chastened tone. “But I still like music in my poetry. Don’t you still like the Hymn to Proserpine—or don’t you remember? ‘From too much love of living——’”