Kipling, in literature; the art of Mr. Sargent in painting; the art of
Richard Strauss in music. In all these remarkable men there is some
small, essential thing lacking; and it is in men like Verlaine, like
Whistler, like Pachmann, that we find the small, essential thing, and
nothing else.
II
The sounds torture me: I see them in my brain;
They spin a flickering web of living threads,
Like butterflies upon the garden beds,
Nets of bright sound. I follow them: in vain.
I must not brush the least dust from their wings:
They die of a touch; but I must capture them,
Or they will turn to a caressing flame,
And lick my soul up with their flutterings.
The sounds torture me: I count them with my eyes,
I feel them like a thirst between my lips;
Is it my body or my soul that cries
With little coloured mouths of sound, and drips
In these bright drops that turn to butterflies
Dying delicately at my finger tips?
III
Pachmann has the head of a monk who has had commerce with the Devil, and
it is whispered that he has sold his soul to the diabolical instrument,
which, since buying it, can speak in a human voice.
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