Arthur Symons

(1865-1945)

Ethereal as Soho candlelight

Behind a fog-enfeathered window-pane
Lurk Arthur Symons’ decadent designs:
Poems, paling like a yellow haze to white,
As all their pastel tones dissolve in rain,
The storms of Time that curtain and confine
The poet’s soul, and blot each precious line.
And yet you glimpse his ghost in Drury Lane,
Languid like a vagrant vagabond,
A misty phantom fated to remain
Forever flickering, in and out of sight.
For Arthur Symons lived behind (beyond)
This muted, modern age, amid the fond
Yellow Nineties’ aesthetic yesternight.

03-30-80