It is strange that even very careful critics have been led to overlook the personal note in the poems of Leconte de Lisle: probably because the wail of self-pity is so piercing in most modern verse that it deadens the ear to the discreet murmur of the stoic poet's confession. Hence even Anatole France has been led to declare that the author of _Poèmes Barbares_ has determined to be as obstinately absent from his work as God is from creation; and that he has never breathed a word about himself, his secret wishes, or his personal ideals. But what is such a passage as the following if not a revelation of the soul of the poet in its innermost veracity?
_O jeunesse sacrée, irréparable joie, Félicité perdue, où l'âme en pleurs se noie! O lumière, ô fratcheur des monts calmes et bleus, Des coteaux et des bois feuillages onduleux, Aubes d'un jour divin, chants des mers fortunées, Florissante vigueur de mes belles années... Vous vivez, vous chantez, vous palpitez encor, Saintes réalités, dans vos horizons d'or! Mais, ô nature, ô ciel, flois sacrés, monts sublimes, Bois dont les vents amis sont murmurer les cimes, Formes de l'idéal, magnifiques aux yeux, Vous avez disparu de mon cœur oublieux! Et voici que, lassé de voluptés amères, Haletant du désir de mes mille chimères, Hélas! j'ai désappris les hymnes d'autrefois, Et que mes dieux trahis n'entendent plus ma voix._
This is a note more often heard, perhaps, in English than in French poetry. It is the lament of Wordsworth for the "visionary gleam" that has fled, for "the glory and the dream" that fade into the light of common day.
Leconte de Lisle is unsparing with the results of his erudition, and this probably confirms the popular notion of his remoteness. Here, however, returning for a moment to Landor, we may observe that he is never so close-packed and never so cryptic as the author of _Chrysaor_ and _Gunlaug_. What Leconte de Lisle has to tell us about mysterious Oriental sages and mythical Scandinavian heroes may be unfamiliar to the reader, but is never rendered obscure by his mode of narration. Nothing could be less within our ordinary range of experience than the adventure of _Le Barde de Temrah_, who arrives at dawn from a palace of the Finns, in a chariot drawn by two white buffaloes; but Leconte de Lisle recounts it voluminously, in clear, loud language which leaves no sense of doubt on the listener's mind as to what exactly happened.