Médailles d’argile (La trace), p

ÉTUDES LITTÉRAIRES

loves them as they are, not as an Epicurian eager to enjoy, nor like Vigny, that tender stoic, who believed he ought by his love to compensate mortals for their unhappiness in being born to die; he loves them with their law, in their transition, which is a perpetual beginning again of joy and beauty.

M. Gregh, enlightening the thought tendency of his contemporaries with his intellectual acuteness, has given his latest collection of verse the title « La Beauté de Vivre ». « Life wounds aud deceives », he says, and knowns it; —

Et pourtant je ne maudis pas l’antique sort,

Vieux joug, doux d’être usé, sous quoi nous nous couchons,

Ni les hommes, trop douloureux pour être bons.

Ni Dieu même, le seul vrai coupable, s’il est...

Pourquoi ? Parce que tout, en me blessant, me plaît Etrangement, absurdement, infiniment...

Et que, bon ou mauvais, n’importe, vivre est beau' .

Do not take this for a dilettante affirmation ; the poet does not lose his interest in the objects of life. Suffering and acting — he accepts all — even his ignorance of what it all means. The happiness of living can dispense with other happiness : —

Vivre est bon, vivre est beau, je le sens, je le crois.

Arrière ennuis, chagrins, regrets, tourments passés.

Mélancolie immense et sans cause, ardeur triste :

Rien de cela n’est vrai, rien de cela n’existe, —

Il n’est rien de réel que la joie ici-bas ^

In this new attitude of the poet, poetry changed its note entirely.