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Petersburg to prevent the humiliation; it had brought France to her knees over the Morocco incident and the Delcasse resignation, and would have done so again in 1911 if Great Britain had not ranged herself behind the French republic; it held the issues of peace and war between the great Powers during the Balkan struggles of 1912 and 1913 and prevented Servia from winning its legitimate fruits of victory or Montenegro from holding what it had won; it had watched with delight the defeat of unorganized Russia at the hands of Japan and saw what its writers described as a decadent British Empire holding in feeble hands a quarter of the earth in fee, with revolt coming in Ireland, rebellion seething in India, dissatisfaction in South Africa, separation upon the horizon in Canada and Australia.
His youthful confidence in the perpetuity of poetry, of the poetical interests in life, creed-less as he may otherwise seem to be, is, we think, a token, though certainly an unconscious token, of the spontaneous originality of his muse. For a writer of his peculiar philosophic tenets, at all events, the world itself, in truth, must seem irretrievably old or even decadent.
"And so I broke my heart over a decadent philanderer in a suit of bright brass clothes and remember it thirteen hundred years afterwards in another life! Thank you, Captain Hazlewood!" "No, you don't actually remember it, Stella, but you have a feeling that round about Stane Street you once suffered great humiliation and unhappiness."
Already fine phrases were forming themselves in his mind: "The inexpressible beauty of autumnal decay." "The exquisiteness of the decadent efflorescence of a passing race." He covered a sheet of foolscap with a bare he called it a detached statement of the facts about Irish lunacy. He had just begun to recount his own experience when there was a knock at the door.
Thus, in politics the modern Jingoes practically say, 'Let us have the pleasures of conquerors without the pains of soldiers: let us sit on sofas and be a hardy race. Thus, in religion and morals, the decadent mystics say: 'Let us have the fragrance of sacred purity without the sorrows of self-restraint; let us sing hymns alternately to the Virgin and Priapus. Thus in love the free-lovers say: 'Let us have the splendour of offering ourselves without the peril of committing ourselves; let us see whether one cannot commit suicide an unlimited number of times.
Sikes was evidently of wild blood a half-breed, if his swarthy skin and high cheek bones meant any characteristics of race scarcely more than a savage by nature, and rendered even more decadent by the ravages of drink. He was sober enough now, but this only left him the more morose and sullen, his bloodshot eyes ugly and malignant.
And hidden among those scentless flowers, in secret places cunningly contrived, were great groups of hyacinths, which poured forth their thick and decadent scent, breathing heavily their hearts into the small atmosphere of the room, and giving a strange and unnatural soul to the tulips who had spent all their efforts in the attainment of form and daring combinations of colour.
The error of the Germans, we were told, was always that they are too humane; their dislike of cruelty amounts to a weakness in them. They let France escape with a paltry fine, next time France must be beaten to the dust. Always with a pleasant outward courtesy, he passed on to England. England was decadent and powerless, her rule must pass to the Germans.
I lay awake for hours thinking of the fate of thousands of human beings dependent on such men as Petar Karageorgevitch, with his blood-stained hands; his hoary father-in-law, Nikola, weaving spider webs; the decadent Russian, fanatical and cruel; the Levantine Slav, agent of France; the Italians like a pack in full cry with the victim in sight; the Greek Varatassi mainly playing bridge, but plotting behind the scenes with the Greek bishop, and probably with Essad too.
Old, decadent, indeed, it would seem with Mr. Gosse to be also returning to the thoughts, the fears, the consolations, of its youth in Greece, in Italy: Nor seems it strange indeed To hold the happy creed That all fair things that bloom and die Have conscious life as well as I. Then let me joy to be Alive with bird and tree, And have no haughtier aim than this, To be a partner in their bliss.
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