Its pale-gray buckram cover and silver lettering
have not worn well. Nor have its contents. Through these, with a
melancholy interest, I have again been looking. They are not much. But
at the time of their publication I had a vague suspicion that they
MIGHT be. I suppose it is my capacity for faith, not poor Soames's
work, that is weaker than it once was.
TO A YOUNG WOMAN
THOU ART, WHO HAST NOT BEEN!
Pale tunes irresolute
And traceries of old sounds
Blown from a rotted flute
Mingle with noise of cymbals rouged with
rust,
Nor not strange forms and epicene
Lie bleeding in the dust,
Being wounded with wounds.
For this it is
That in thy counterpart
Of age-long mockeries
THOU HAST NOT BEEN NOR ART!
There seemed to me a certain inconsistency as between the first and
last lines of this. I tried, with bent brows, to resolve the discord. But I
did not take my failure as wholly incompatible with a meaning in
Soames's mind. Might it not rather indicate the depth of his meaning?
As for the craftsmanship, "rouged with rust' seemed to me a fine stroke,
and "nor not" instead of "and" had a curious felicity. I wondered who the
"young woman" was and what she had made of it all. I sadly suspect
that Soames could not have made more of it than she. Yet even now, if
one doesn't try to make any sense at all of the poem, and reads it just for
the sound, there is a certain grace of cadence.
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