VILLIERS DE L'ISLE-ADAM.

Up from the darkness on the laughing stage

A sudden trap-door shot you unawares,

Incarnate Tragedy, with your strange airs

Of courteous sadness. Nothing could assuage

The secular grief that was your heritage,

Passed down the long line to the last that bears

The name, a gift of yearnings and despairs

Too greatly noble for this iron age.

Time moved for you not in quotidian beats,

But in the long slow rhythm the ages keep

In their immortal symphony. You taught

That not in the harsh turmoil of the streets

Does life consist; you bade the soul drink deep

Of infinite things, saying: “The rest is naught.”