At last
the hand seems to lose its power and the will its control, though in
flashes of sheer flame the imagination shows wild and beautiful as ever.
His gorgeousness is beyond that of the Orient. The eccentric and
arresting words that constantly amaze the ear, bring with them a sense
of things occult yet dazzling, as if we were assisting at some mystic
rite, in a ritual which demanded language choice and strange.
Something of this may be due to narcotics, and to the depressing tragedy
of his life. More of it is due to Shelley, Keats, and Swinburne. But
these do not explain the style, nor the thoughts which clothed
themselves in it. Both style and thoughts are native to the man. What he
borrows he first makes his own, and thus establishes his right to
borrow--a right very rarely to be conceded. Much that he has learned
from Shelley he passes on to his readers, but before they receive it, it
has become, not Shelley's, but Francis Thompson's. To stick a
lotos-flower in our buttonhole--harris-cloth or broadcloth, it does not
matter--is an impertinent folly that makes a guy of the wearer. But this
man's raiment is his own, not that of other men, and Shelley himself
would willingly have put his own flowers there.
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