Decadents, Symbolists, Anti-Decadents

RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

Robert Louis Stevenson
and other poems 1895

Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947) was a prolific poet, novelist, journalist and essayist, a conspicuous member of the Rhymers’ Club and contributor to The Yellow Book. The nineties were his golden years; as the new century began, so his reputation waned. This volume contains his best and most characteristic work as a poet. As reader for the publishers Elkin Mathews and John Lane he was influential in shaping the literary taste of the period.

£28.50 $48

An animalcule in my blood
Rose up against me as I dreamed,
He was so tiny as he stood,
You had not heard him, though he screamed.

He cried ‘There is no Man!’
And thumped the table with his fist,
Then died - his day was scarce a span -
That microscopic atheist.

Yet all the while his little soul
Within what he denied did live -
Poor part, how could he know the whole?
And yet he was so positive!

And all the while he thus blasphemend
My (solar) system went its round,
My heart beat on, my head still dreamed -
But my poor atheist was drowned.

(‘The Animalcule on Man’, page 72)

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Poetry of the 1890s