ABSTRACT
A second mark of decadence is the affectation of poets, their involved obscurity of style, their ingenious absurdities, their conceits. They desire to display their skill and wit in yoking together heterogeneous ideas, in justifying the unnatural, in converting life into a puzzle, and dream. They are characterized by the philosophizing spirit, the activity of the intellect rather than that of the emotions. The prevalent taste to trace resemblances that are fantastic, to strain after novelty and surprize. Thus Donne, earliest of the school, says of a seavoyage:
There note they the ships sicknesses, the Mast Shak’d with this ague, and the Hold and Wast With a salt dropsie clog’d,…
When a flea bites him and his mistress, he says:
This flea is you and I, and this Our mariage bed, and mariage temple is ...
