Yet what have I to do with sweets
Like Love, or Wine, or Fame’s dear curse?
For I can do without all things
Except—except the universe.
Mr. Torrence’s quatrains penetrate into the nebulous dreams of youth, or rather, interpret them, since The House of a Hundred Lights was reared in that charméd air, and carry one through the realm of rainbows to the land of the gray light, to which every pilgrim comes anon. Love receives its toll, the costliest and most precious as youth fares on; and Mr. Torrence proves himself a poet in his picture of this tribute-giving at the road-house of Love. Not only the visioning, but the lucidity of the words, and their soft consonance, prove him sensitive to the values of cadence and simplicity:
Last night I heard a wanton girl
Call softly down unto her lover,
Or call at least unto the shade
Of Cypress where she knew he’d hover.
Said she, “Come forth, my Perfect One;