ABSTRACT
This might not be the theory most worthy of acceptance were the poems themselves less worthy of consideration. Affected and strained though they often are, and lacking the exaltation that can come alone from a high and sincere poetic purpose, they are scarcely what one would expect from a hare-brain or a guy. Coming from a new and unknown writer, they are certainly remarkable. Striking in form and treatment, and polished in workmanship, while they fail to move those deeper human chords inaccessible to their studied artificiality, they often surprise us with their virility and freedom, and are never, except in disconnected passages, ridiculous. There are some intense lines which are dangerously near the breakers, but these are usually rescued before their sense is wrecked. Most tastes will reject such phrases as ‘unvintageable sea’ and ‘paddled with the polished throat,’ though the latter finds its justification, and doubtless found its suggestion, in Shakespere’s ‘paddling in your neck,’ etc. That the poems are often overweightedand turgid in their straining for effect is no more than could be expected of so affected a person. And that they are altogether, lacking in humor is still more needless to state, since it is precisely the lack of this quality in an Æsthete that can alone prevent him from perceiving his own ridiculousness.
