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. 🔊 Soames was an artist, in so far as he was anything, poor fellow! 🔊

It seemed to me, when first I read Fungoids, that, oddly enough, the diabolistic side of him was the best. 🔊 Diabolism seemed to be a cheerful, even a wholesome influence in his life. 🔊

NOCTURNE

  Round and round the shutter'd Square

  I strolled with the Devil's arm in mine. 🔊

  No sound but the scrape of his hoofs was there

  And the ring of his laughter and mine. 🔊

    We had drunk black wine. 🔊

  I scream'd, "I will race you, Master!" 🔊

  "What matter," he shriek'd, "to-night

  Which of us runs the faster? 🔊

  There is nothing to fear to-night

    In the foul moon's light!" 🔊

  Then I look'd him in the eyes

  And I laugh'd full shrill at the lie he told

  And the gnawing fear he would fain disguise. 🔊

  It was true, what I'd time and again been told:

    He was old—old. 🔊