Little Poems in Prose

mysterious symphony for the eyes; and from all things, from every corner, from the cracks of drawers and from the folds of the curtains escapes a strange perfume—a “Come-back-to- me” from Sumatra—which is as it were the soul of the place. A true country of Cockaigne, I tell you, where all is rich, clean, glittering like a beauti- ful conception, like magnificent plate, like splendid gold-work, like a mosaic of jewels. All the treasures of the world flow to it as in the house of a man who has well toiled and has deserved well of the whole world. Strange country, superior to all others, as Art is to Na- ture, where nature is re-formed by dream, where she is corrected, beautified, re-moulded. Let them seek, let them still seek; let them ever push back the limits of their happiness, these alchemists of gardening; let them pro- pose their prizes of sixty and one hundred thousand florins for whoever shall solve their ambitious problems; for me, I have found my black tulip and my blue dahlia. Incomparable flower, re-discovered tulip, al- legorical dahlia! It is there, is it not, in this lovely country, so calm and so dreamy, that we must grow, live, and flourish? Are not you framed in your analogy, and can you not ad-