Venez avec des corbeilles de violettes, ô fillettes Qui hésitez un peu dans le chemin des hêtres, Par crainte des paroles solennelles du prêtre. Venez, le ciel est tout sonore d'invisibles alouettes....
C'est la fête de la mort, et l'on dirait dimanche, Tant les cloches sonnent, douces au fond de la vallée; Les garçons se sont cachés dans les petites allées; Vous seules devez prier au pied de la tombe blanche....
Quelque année, les garçons qui se cachent aujourd'hui Viendront vous dire à toutes la douce douleur d'aimer, Et l'on vous entendra, autour du mât de mai, Chanter des rondes d'enfance pour saluer la nuit.
Stuart Merrill did not embark in vain, the day he desired to cross the Atlantic, to come and woo the proud French poetry, and place one of her flowers in his hair.
One of the most fruitful and astonishing inventors of images and metaphors. To find new expressions, Huysmans materializes the spiritual and the intellectual spheres, thus giving his style a precision somewhat heavy and a lucidity rather unnatural: _rotten souls_ (like teeth) and _cracked hearts_ (like an old wall); it is picturesque and nothing else. The inverse operation is more conformable to the old taste of men for endowing vague sentiments and a dim consciousness to objects. It remains faithful to the pantheistic and animistic tradition without which neither art nor poetry would be possible. It is the deep source from which all the others are formed, pure water transformed by the slightest ray of sunshine into jewels sparkling like fairy collars. Other "metaphorists" like Jules Renard, venture to seek the image either in a reforming vision, a detail separated from the whole becoming the thing itself, or in a transposition and exaggeration of metaphors in usage; finally, there is the analogic method by which, without our voluntary aid, the meaning of ordinary words change daily. Saint-Pol-Roux blends these methods and makes them all contribute to the manufacture of images which, if they are all new, are not all beautiful. From them a catalogue or a dictionary could be drawn up:
Wise-Woman of light means the cock. Morrow of the caterpillar in balldress -- butterfly. Sin that sucks -- natural child. Living distaff -- mutton. Fin of the plow -- plowshare. Wasp with the whip sting -- diligence. Breast of crystal -- flagon. Crab of the hand -- open hand. Letter announcement -- magpie. Cemetery with wings -- a flight of crows. Romance for the nostrils -- perfume of flowers. To tame the carious jawbone of bemol of a modern tarask -- to play the piano. Surly gewgaw of the doorway -- watchdog. Blaspheming limousine -- wagoner. To chant a bronze alexandrine -- to peal midnight. Cognac of Father Adam -- the broad, pure air. Imagery only seen with closed eyes -- dreams. Leaves of living salad -- frogs. Green chatterers -- frogs. Sonorous wild-poppy -- cock-crow.