collectionofpoems

 

 

COLLECTION  OF   POEMS

 

 

 

 

THE    ALCHEMY   OF   MIND

 

Embalmed by the fragrance of  Illusion of

My rosy trapestry, I

Was thankful to that which

Al mortals beseech ;

And folowing the aroma for hours

‘did’  I reach The Pharaoh

Sinkng and cursing the harmonies

Of the Nile.

To meet the clouds of  syncopation.

 

Sleeping  within that wrinkled webs

Of   mystery,

Weaving those souls of  pyramidals

Solitude ;

As  the rootless reeds bend down

To the sand ….. In search of

The  Alchemist.

 

 

-----------:;-----------

 

 

 

 

BEYOND  THAT   PALE BLUE

 

And yet

I saw some flosty flakes

Whitten bloody heaps ; Those

Carcasses  of  thoughts undone

As  rains  in  spring inurn anew.

Those dead eyes through fire

Had gone.

Perished dark  into realms of  blue

In walks and strokes.

And yet

Perhaps I was only one of

Those earthly blokes

Who sulked and sulked, but

Never cried upon that heap of

Mute azure, beyond that

Restless maple…

Beyond that Siberian pale.

 

 

--------::--------

 

 

RATTLING   PAST   CALCUTTA

Tramcars enjoying the dirt and incessant

Bustle of  Calcutta’s  busy streets

A cow’s tail is not any worse as it tolerates

Obstinate flies swooping in on its wounds.

We’ve learnt to stay within our tracks.

Un-spoken harmony, isn’t it?

Learn to live with it ---- like

Diabetes, arthritis, or fuel prices

Hopping on and off don’t ever

Appear life-threatening.

 

Ever-so-magnanimous-and-non-judgmental

Sun would eventually adorn many

A landlord’s walls.

Here,

Competition is upstart and unsentimental.

Odourous offerings in the forms of

Water hyacinth, overgrown weeds --- all

Ubiquitous. Here.

And the ubiquitous factory-like hum

Tirelessly trying to get the record straight,

Left in the lurch to

Cross a cultural dessert….

All alone.

 

--------------------

 

No ESCAPE ROUTE 

 

[ Poem on the serious matter of students’ suicides in various institutes of excellence in India]

 

Hurled  so many comments, uncharitable. Left simply ‘No

Escape Route’ . Those on the verge of growth, at the

Threshold  of  blossoming, those budding

Souls. Why pay any tribute at all ?

Can’t prevent at all ! This ‘end of the road’.

Islands of  talent, in islands of  excellence.

 

 

Intriguing, necessary evils, cream of the crop.

One-size-fit-for-all system, ---- the villain

Creates morbidity. Obsessed with performance.

Victims of  depression. Less fortunate.

Too simplistic or too impracticable to be enforced.

Mugging the minds.

Negative mirroring of  one’ self. Flimsy grounds,

De-stressing the stressed, flunked the job.

 

 

Shy and introvert, yet drugged.

Alcoholic. Then extreme. Vanquished.

Diluted.

Anguished . System itself-the-traitor,

Not those tormented souls.

Catastrophe for one and all, this society .

Yet, considered unfeasible any solution .

Grown, this society ---- visible. But, evolved ?

Of  course, not. At this rate of  clinical detachment.

Baffled, these pupils, to tackle impromptu

Encounter with the demons of  their present.

 

 

                

 

                     -----------::-----------

 

 

PROMISED

 

It simply just like the silent tears which falls from our eyes..

How could you can be so mean towards me.
I promised myself I would not shed tears from my eyes.
Then a silent tear falls from my eye.

I break the promise of mine only for you..

It was all your fault because you made me to fall in your love

What did I do, why did I cry for you?

To make you change your mind, I did everything in this world which was possible for me.
But still you didn’t change your mind, You even didn’t think once before getting mean

Everyday I wait for a single sign but I never receive one,

one sign which can tell your feelings towards me.

Another day comes and goes,

I want to write, but I can't, I know because words are not enough to express my feelings for you.
You said you needed me more than I needed you in this world,
Why would you say that, if you knew it wasn't true?

Why you lied me? when you know this lie can change my life

I started thinking it was truth but it was never a truth it was a lie which you said me.

Why did you say you loved me?

why then you turn around and left me alone in this world?

You know it was you whom I loved but still you did such means thing with me

I love you and want you,

But I know I can't make you love me.

Still now those silent tears shed from my eyes only for you.

It seems my tears are no more value for you.

 

 

 

 

THE CONTAGION  OF  CHAOS

 

 

Trickster archetype yet

Capturing  the essence of  this double-edged

Society. Reproducing in media….

 

Virtual partner, we, all those chime

Consigned into ‘Les-quoted’ pages of  time.

Smoke billowing out, yet promises galore…

 

Talk of  History and to history out the happenings..

Sojourn ..Evocative  streets to staid walls of  buildings

My soul torments me, my spirit…

 

Elevation, or  a journey on a scornful path :

The poem and not the poet,

The magic and not the mundane….

 

The music and not the craft.

The spirit and not the flesh, yet.

Faith unshakable in  these -----

 

Journey into the realm of a baffling riddler, shape-changing

Serious, rather whiming

Last gasp of  an ideal….

 

I witnessed the  gasping ideal,

For the misfortune to take place well.

The plague will rouse its rats.

 

And running on uneven surfaces that little,

Where even a dry twig feels brittle,

Send them to die in some well-contended history.

 

 

----------::-----------

 

 

 

 

 

Your   Character   Proclaims

 

Precepts  in our memory vision

The  character lurking ; Thoughts  given

No tongue, nor any unproportioned thought

Your act. Familiarity okayed but

Never those vulgarity.

 

Grapple your friends with steel to your

Soul. Quarrel strictly no no. Yet

Oppose. Ear always ready yours, but

No voice their speech.

Censured, why not ! But reserve your

Judgment.

Apparel proclaims the wearer.

Borrower  notwithstanding lender ;

Loses thy friend and of  course itself.

 

And it blurs the edge.

 

 

                                ---------------------::---------------------

 

 

 

 

The (Silent) Death of the Ordinariness

 

Welcome to our Newly Balkanised Times :

Thinking of our resident ‘Maithili-Bihari’ cook

‘Dina’ ----  my grandpa’s  personal ‘service provider’.

Artless and tactless, he joined me in

The Silicon Valley of  India.

His hilarious recounting of  the Dhoti-Punjabi

Brigade’s daily battle with the fish-sellers ---

The thought drags on.

 

But the greatest worry would have been

The fury of  today’s lynch brigade, the distance

From them my life notwithstanding.

It’s the ‘silent  death  of   the ordinariness’

We took for granted, and that too, for so long.

 

Dina’s beyond harm.

A ‘North Indian’ (including North and Eastern Indian)

Is an unwelcome phenomenon in

Bangalore.

Our Hindi belt ‘bhaiya’ would have

Been thrown into prison had he

Been alive.

A high-octane campaign, real ‘reality show’.

Of course, at irregular intervals.

‘Oh-mi-god !’

 

P.T.O.

--2—

 

 

The straw has broken  the camel’s back.

 

Success  if guaranteed because of 

The politicos, the ‘language warriors’

----- All  have ‘skin in the game’.

 

 

A ‘Universal Indian phenomenon’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                           

ELECTIONS

 

          

As ‘Elections’ advance and campaigns intensify in the subcontinent,

Humour declines and

Rumour takes over.

No more.

Alas ! very rarely we have a good ‘election

Joke’. More often than not we have only

Jokers.

 

‘One can’t  cut a tree with a nail-cutter’ ---

A joke as well as a reality.

 

Bribery is equal to the status of  a Mother.

Today. Spread al over the world.

It has gone into the marrow of  our bones.

We’ve heard of bone-marrow operation,

But no operation to remove the ghost,

The ‘ghost of  bribery’ ---- it’s become an

Agenda in elections.

 

Varied ‘types’ of speech. Makes one rooted to

Speech. But some speech-writers create the magic of

Speechlessness after the speech. A few become

Speechless even before the speech.

Stunned, literally.

P.T.O.

 

--:2:--

 

Whoever it is :

A donkey, a dog, a dodo and

A duffer.

The ‘field’ is welcome to everyone.

 

                                                                      

-------------::-------------

 

 

 

LOSS   OF   INDIVIDUALITY

 

 

 

“That kongressy,” yelled one neighbour. And brush

With intra-racism intricacy. Purposefully discriminatory as  the

Look  on  his face. No end to this, absolutely by the

Sickle-hammer-star brigade, just as no end to the flow

Of water through the Ganges. Red Empire, indeed.

Obscenities, virtue, deep rooted. Torture, invasion

Burnt with sulphur and pored molten lead.

The ‘otherness’, local Ethnocentrism resulted out,

Of the notion of  the cultural bandwagon, now a ‘cliché’ ----

This oft-repeated adage.

Middle Age barbarism.  Modern Age feudalism --- not unequal.

Plots concocted, vulgar-like, a blister ----

Unthinkable predicament, rather shameless. Interiors of

Conscience. Phallic domination, where even eagles dare.

 

 

Pick up ‘vegetables and women’ in the same breath, that’s your job

Subservient. Sidekicks all and sundry.

Insipient ---- the rest. Terrorised, not the body of the condemned, but

The mind and soul of the freethinkers. Haven’t dare to be exile.

The clown-king, hidden in self-righteous rhetoric, nudity.

George Orwell’s 1984 revisited, albeit in a reformed state.

Mobocracy such --- even Aristotle would have backtracked.

Mirroring this last gasp of idealogy gone bankrupt.

Form of  neo-colonialism. Insidious.

Forgotten the song : “Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”

Assurance in idiocacy. Ringmasters and trapeze-artists fifteen lacs ;

Ever-ready to share the booty.

When did we last dare to be ‘True’ individuals ?

 

 

 

                             

 

 

------------------::-----------------

 

 

 

 

INCOGNITO

 

 

Living in Untrodden swamps

Covering misty locales where

Views steal words

And sometimes steal ‘themselves’ !

Far away from reality

Far across that reality

Far within that reality,

Among those realms

Of Unseen nightmares

Like ‘Night Mares’ galloping

Throughout subconscious,

Of  those realms.

Absence of  celestial light, any …

Surroundings un-apparelled.

 

 

Reverberating in the veins

And the arteries ;

Walking across life in silence.

Confidence, yet, intruding as dark matter.

Screams…, screams from nowhere.

I move on across the trifles

Walking across dreams ‘ve never

Achieved at  all.

And those shattered realms

Spewing ---- only ‘Venoms’

With the passing away of the last train

Of thought, awhile ago, ere

The fog descends on the tracks

Rather suddenly.

Awkwardly sudden .

Seconds tick by,

The fog, part in white, yet in dark.

Obscures the vision

Just like it ; Does to everyone

Who confronts it,

Or, dares to….

 

 

Hanging on the ledge,

I,…… Like those bats, in the dark.

Footsteps heard --- without footfalls.

Or, just ‘creature-likes’,

The creatures --- all dumb,

Withnesses, probably the dumb withnesses.

No one dare to bare ----

At those ‘Asleeps’.

Like subjects, these predicates , too-----

Decimated.

 

 

 

-----------::-----------

 

 

Yesterday, Without End

Our life, these paths
That call us
In the coolness of meadows
Where water shines.

Some of them go roaming
On the crowns of trees,
Just as in our sleep, a dream
Will seek its other earth.

They wander, hands full
Of golden dust.
They spread their fingers, And night falls.

 

----------::--------

 

 

 

 

THE CONTORTIONIST

 

 

 

 

Finding the scapegoats ---- those

Yellow blossoms

Measure my evil against.

 

To dissect all my vicissitudes.

To negress.

 

Death takes away  vanity.

White flame ---- not clear, of course.

Frozen into 'placidity'.

Thought's a luxury in a newbie intellect,

Depositing 'bad conscience'.

Being jealous of the dead.

 

Sweet dark tranquility settled upon

My soul.

Upon its dark uneasiness.

Solicitous one

 

 

Eyeducts dry

Bedaggled from illicit Forays

Hammering my pain into myself ;

Intellectual stands for an individual.

No 'credit balance' this time

For redemption.

Internal treachery.

 

Queer calvinistic protectionism,

Forcing me the 'other way think'.

That cup of tea on an abbot's platform

 

D'sire to choke and rend and crush.

 

Leeching my strength

Leer smile

Trying to pull my inner self------

 

From muck.

The fishers' fragile cranes hovering over.

Mistress of my shuffle ---

Those white trousers, mauvre patters slit up

The thigh..... I really feel.

Death is absolute.

 

Only absolute.

Canal full of bodies, of carcasses

Irish stew --- too much meat.

How quick, simple and anonymous its impersonation

When i die and my body lay in a doorway.

After all, nobody is ever betrayed by enemy,

But friend.

 

Like Silence of the Invisible

 

 

 

 

--------::--------

 

 

 

Oxymoron

Trapped, like a trap in a trap.

By the time you swear you're his
Shivering, sighing
And he swears his love for you is
Infinite, undying
Lady, make a note of this
One of you is lying

 

 

-----::-----

 

 

 

                                 THE  MUSIC

 

 

 

Swelling into the realm of  a  majestic,

Echoing out into space,

Thunderstorm swaying the grass on  some old  rustic

Burial mound ;

Bringing dim ----

Long past dream.

 

 

Dramatic eyes share their bounty ;

The Ear reposes its faith.

Along does its partner in  gaith.

Impressions carried away in aplenty.

 

 

What a  picture of  colour

These two Epithets call up !

Looking for  improvisation

The very soul that enrapture.

 

 

Would be a blasphemy---

Just as passes no one, that blind

And handicapped  beggars – without

Throwing them a  cropper, kind.

 

 

Deep silence. Not even the sound of  drop

Of the dew on the leaf.

Practicing warble, not a dirge

Showering a  bliss of  solitude, drinking binge

Abound. Oh, mi Lord

From His gentle Abode.

People versed in matters of  this kind

Complete absolutions  in  the  Other world bind

Joyous clamour of its bell

The Church echoes ‘the fame of  the travail’

Of the Father’s miracle all we avail.

 

 

A new wound opened with,

As the newest ‘note’ came bright.

Mobile, sparkling

Clamour of  life’s being.

Revealing a  wound in its compelling power

Distinct came out !  more and more.

Wisps like  solemn,

Unrestrained, yet sinking calm.

 

 

But the chants and the chants bore away,

As the last note died away

Soul-rendering. Tears of the crimson tide

Myriad faces she did bide.

 

 

And she reposed : “I’ve not lived in vain.”

And the message bore  thick and thin .

Black night set against bright day

Apalling profundity, truth gay.

Every heart trembled with the gong,

As though a thunderbolt broke over the thong.

 

 

 

 

       -----------::-----------

 

 

 

The Spirit

 

Oh tears,

splash my face,with abandoned drops,

leaving stains in the places,where they drop.

Oh scattered heart,

left broken in pain,

to heal the bitterness,of ignorant men.
Woman, heal thy deepest wounds!

Oh limbs,

that I could run,a thousand miles,from this phase;
but, alas this time,I've run out of time;

and the way I feel,is the symbolic sign.

Oh breath,

so taken advantage of,the one thing I see,
as a gift now;have mercy, in my resolve?

Oh mind,

so delicate, and re-defined

;ancient as the perennial grass;

and as for the universe;

perhaps the mind,

is just as eternal- vast.

Oh kindred spirit;
kind whisperer of my soul

;guide me, kindred One;
to the place, where I began.

 

 

 

----::----

 

 

 

 

DEAD LETTER

 

A missing place,
Within my heart,
One I cannot escape,
It tortures my soul,
I am not whole,
No comfort shall I take,

I look back on my homeland,
Abounding with memory and happiness,
What happened to it all?
How did it come to this O’Lord ?
When did I so tragically fall?

When I see my dwelling,
All the memories of old,
I no longer see the beauties of life,
I see anger and sadness,
My own grief and pain,
Now that my time there is through,
The old happiness I cannot feign,

A dream it may seem,
To be out on your own,
But once the realization comes to pass,
Your ambitions never shone,

My whole life spent in dreams,
Not that they are vain,
Now all I want to do is turn back,
And escape this onrushing pain,

The word strikes up the curiosities of hearts,
To dream of exile, free of many things,
But those who have gone through it,
Will give up so much to alter what it brings,

To come back to the life they once loved,
To cherish and believe once more,
To love the land I had once known,
And thrive not in the darkness of the mourning dove,

The word no common man really knows,
The description we all long to possess,
The fountain of regrets,
As I write my dead letter to the world.

 

 

----::----

 

 

 

THE NATIVE GIRL

 

 

 

 

Be’dew’d, those two cheeks,

Those dimples moving up n down

Like that squirrel lurking in the green creeks,

Appearing like the glows up, after sundown.

 

 

Fluttering that flailing body,

Inherited tonight like rhapsody ---

A heart incapable of  watching, and receiving

Is to wander free with no meaning,

Forlorn and shipwreck’d

Finds no happiness unblighted ;

Thirsty sorrow at its side

Bestrides like wintry flood, bide

Her good-bye, counterfeited glee

Try to throttle the breath of the sea.

The shoots and the stems never reach

To hear the sound, of thgose who teach.

The travails howsoe’ver, the sky

Can never really come, to kiss her bye.

 

 

Wooing --- oh no ! failed.

Mar the land of the dread !

Wanting to be with her,

My heart makes every obstacles bar

Like spasm – or, scene leftover

Dance and dance her shadows over.

 

 

Life now --- a spray of  yew !

Treated her likes with deadly dew.

Uprise who struck wild surmise

Left them high and dry, no surprise ---

Those no mean preachers

 

Amorous bounties and treachourous.

No matter how blithe  the throttle rings,

Ah ! mingled dark and grey flings

Among the children of  the Aryans.

Yonder ! slaps  of  the mandarins.

 

 

In mazes of cold and heat,

Her soul was yearning for a little beat

Of  that drum in the woods,

When she has no time for broods.

Waiting still, for a new planet

Tears of thoughtful gratitude in the garet.

Archaicly obscure --- no suitable synonyms.

Coaxing the life with subsisted hymms.

Only substitutes, us  contemptible creatures

These all suitable souls, Aryan vultures.

Can’t ever take the place of another ;

Just as ratiocination, for argument further.

 

 

We don’t want ‘change’ simply for ;

For, the ‘sake’ of change is graft galore

Will there be a time ?

When Natives like her will also sing a rhyme,

Of the Right, And Good and Infinite ---

Thine own, no dispute, with absolute,

Not only in this vast ‘land of the three seas’,

‘Tis too, strike at civilisations’s knees.

 

 

 

         

 

 

                                                -------------::------------

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MOMENTS OF  SUCCESS

 

 

 

Moments of  success, there were.

Sensations merged with my own space impressions.

The Earth cracked with dark melancholy.

Roll of  thunder.

Vastness abound. Still something would pass,

I guessed.

Too great a definition  --- for ‘serenity’.

 

 

But dim imaginings came tormenting. Shades

Of  satisfaction, though, followed.

Afflicted spirit, and its painful seekings.

For succession.

Burdened.

Precariously, with too many characters,

Flair and  coherence.

 

 

“Keep it simple”. Sounds straight enough.

With million layers  to  the idea.

Often fashioning out  jaw-dropping moves,

Blinding pace --- as if  a ballet dancer’s art.

Simple ‘vanity overwhelmed’ in  persona.

 

 

A flash, spotlight-cornering ,

Bordering-on-the-hedonistic persona.

Intent gaze.

Denying the secondary identity its

Primary one.

Newly balkanised times .  ours, very own.

An Autumn Atternum. Embelm.

Scepticism.

 

 

 

----::----

 

 

 

 

THOSE  TWO  DUNNOCKS

 

Swans  of  virtues ----

Those pairs  of  Dunnocks, lovely

Feeding each other, hopping gently

Towards a  bush. The male

Proceeded to  one side, the

Female to the other. Paragon of  fidelity ;

Out of  the male’s field of  vision

Once, the female instantly

Flew into the nearby undergrowth

Where she mated ---

With a different ‘the other’ male

Dunnock  hiding there. Then,

She rejoined her mate,

Acting

As though happened nothing !

Loyalty, duty attributed.

 

 

 

---------------::--------------

 

                    

 

STRINGS  ATTACHED

 

 

 

Weighing the cost, the lady’s getting ready

Like

The Kentish Plover, to leave with a

Handsomer male,

The ‘about to be’ ‘ex’ tries the ploy

Cunning psychological ---

Pretending ailment serious, losing

                                              Weight

Deliberate

And he wins ‘handsome’,

Dull plumage now likely to be

Cuckolded by.

 

 

 

 

----------::---------

 

 

The  GREAT RECESSION

 

Paying huge medical bills ?

Waste away your scarce  savings. Through

These rivers  ------ all polluting.

Remember the texan scoundrel millionaire JR in the TV series “Dallas” ?

His aspirations ?

The banks printed Quantity --– paper money

And leverage. Prostitutes and drug addicts ----

Creations of too much poverty and too much money.

Forgot that people care more about the

Quality, of life and basic values of

Honesty and Integrity in the early morning of Twenty-first century

Growth for growth’s sake.

The toxic products created ---- all financial.

The toxic products created --- all environmental.

Greed and arrogance of the Wall Street  Madoffs .

The investment bankers thought that

Golden parachutes were their birth-rights.

Rather a privilege from the trust

Of the people. Anger of the rural masses.

Large white mansions with Roman columns and

Gilded French furniture.

Huge  losses.  What use these when

News channels report suicides by stockholders.

Sufferrer ----  the publics.

Mental and physical. I can feel.

Ecocosm ---- so fragile.

Economists and professionals prominent galore.

Wanting  at the corporate governance.

The  earth lost .  Can we be far behind ?

Trust ? Where it is now ?

Consumption resulting into

‘Zero Sum game’.

 

 

 

 

--------------------------

ABOUT THE poet:---

Dibyendu Ghosal was born and brought up in Kolkata City, previously known as Calcutta, India. A Master's Degree in Computer Sci. & Engg., and having his devoted time in Literature, Arts and world Cinema. A man of literary convictions andhaving the courage to follow his convictions unmindful of the popular trends . His knowledge and works in World Cinema, including Art-house, Parallel as well as commercial is huge. The lifestyle and writings of Dibyendu Ghosal is surrounded and moulded by Elizabethan era British culture. Always been a Intellectual and a frequenter to Film Forums and Film festivals in India, he is fond of serious and art-house movies like those classics of Tenesse Williams, Elia Kazan, Jiri Menzel, Ray & Ritwik as well as Gillo Pontecorvo and Bertolucci of Italy. Mr. Rajendra Krishan, editor of Boloji spiritual and literary magazine, has compared his writings to Nineteenth century playwright & novelist William Somerset Maugham. Dibyendu Ghosal is educated and grown up under the influence of the School of Thought of legendery Broadway & British Theatre dramatists & Hollywood actors Richard Burton and Joseph Fiennes, thus harping on mental stress and strain, mental strategies and sufferings in his writings rather than plots or characters. His non-compromising attitude in literature has compelled him not to alter his writings by bowing to market trends or publishers' demands or thumbrules. Wine, cigar , emotion, arts and literature are in unison in his writings. He generally constructs his pieces sharing patterns based on 'Universal' values and structures, like the oppositions of life and death and life and after-life, nature and culture. And leaning on Christian doctrines in which he firmly believes. He never bowed before the publishers' demands and deadlines or the current market trends and never altered his style of writings. Following light-hearted humourous articles published in The Sunday Statesman, India :-- IMPRESSIONS magazine (Year 2000) "Off The Cuff" column-- CYBER VIBER ASCENT magazine ( 2001) "Off the cuff" column-SAVING FACE ASCENT mag (2001) "Off the cuff" column-MATCH FIXER Articles such as "Human Rights Violations in Jammu & Kashmir --- The Daily Excelsior "EDITORIAL Page " dated July 25, 2003 ... New Delhi, Jammu editions (India) Site : www.dailyexcelsior.com/web1/03july25/edit.htm

Short story "Needle Work" in the newspaper The Sunday Statesman, India dated May 8 , 2005.

Short Story "The Man and the Baby" published in The New England Review in the Winter Issue - July, 2005

Short story "The Woman Who Died Young" :-- Writing.com e-zine ; , 2006 short stories published in BOLOJI.COM print and ezine :-- "Cleopatra" , "The Night of Ten", The Daydreamer , MEENAXI The editor Mr. Rajender Krishan's official letter informing that the story "Cleopatra" reminded him of the novel "Of Human Bondage" by Dr. W. Somerset Maugham.

He is also a member of the Amnesty International and an associate member of the Afghan Women's Mission and the Kabul-based Revolutionary Assoc. of Women of Afghanistan, contributing a few articles against the torture of the Afghan warlords on the people there . A very unobtrusive young man, a secluded life gives him retiring manners. The extremes of vigour and simplicity converge to meet in his nature. Under a sophisticated Roman catholic culture, inartifial tastes, and an un-pretending atheism outside, his powers are unadapted to the practical business of life. He writes from the impulse of nature, the dictates of intuition, and from such stores of observation. Never known to be a fighter, he is better known as a man of the Aristocracy for the language he uses in his writings -- fond of Romeo and Julietta cigar and vintage French wine, a delightful decadency follows.