they fought against odds and fell;
“En avant les enfants perdus!”
We fight against odds as well.”
Enfant perdu: so the dying Heine calls himself. Enfants perdus, that is what they were! The storms of our terrible period of transition raged about them: “they could not wait their passing,” as Arnold says—
“they could not wait their passing, they are dead.”
“I am slow,” says Gordon,
“I am slow in learning, and swift in
forgetting, and I have grown
so weary with long sand-sifting!
T’wards the mist, where the breakers moan