It was
such a coloured thing; though the grey things also, the cool things,
all the fresher for the contrast--with a freshness, again, that
seemed to touch and cool the soul--found their account [55] there;
the clangorous passage of the birds at night foretokening rain, the
moan of the wind at the door, the wind's self made visible over the
yielding corn.
It was thus Gaston understood the poetry of Ronsard, generously
expanding it to the full measure of its intention. That poetry, too,
lost its thaumaturgic power in turn, and became mere literature in
exchange for life, partly in the natural revolution of poetic taste,
partly for its faults. Faults and all, however, Gaston loyally
accepted it; those faults--the lapse of grace into affectation, of
learning into pedantry, of exotic fineness into a trick--counting
with him as but the proof of faith to its own dominant positions.
They were but characteristics, needing no apology with the initiated,
or welcome even, as savouring of the master's peculiarities of
perfection. He listened, he looked round freely, but always now with
the ear, the eye, of his favourite poet.
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