It is always and for ever thus, if men could only realise it. Since the Cross rose in the sky, the hectic joys of sin have been mingled with bitterness, torture, cold.
The frightful "Colloque Sentimental" of Verlaine expresses these two people, at this moment, well enough. Written by a temperamental saint turned satyr and nearly always influenced by drink; translated by a young English poet whose wings were always beating in vain against the prison wall he himself had built; you have these sad companions. . . .
Into the lonely park all frozen fast,
Awhile ago there were two forms who passed.
Lo, are their lips fallen and their eyes dead,
Hardly shall a man hear the words they said.
Into the lonely park all frozen fast
There came two shadows who recall the past.
"Dost thou remember our old ecstasy?"
"Wherefore should I possess that memory?"