It seemed worse than the worst of Browning to understand.

He found one poem about a garden entitled "Revue." "Crimson and resonant clangs the dawn," said the poet.

Then he went on to describe noonday: "Sunflowers, tall Grenadiers, ogle the roses' short-skirted ballet.
The fumes of dark sweet wine hidden in frail petals Madden the drunkard bees." This seemed to him an odd way to look at things, and he boggled over a phrase about an "epicene lily." Then came evening: "The painted gauze of the stars flutters in a fold of twilight crape," sang Mr.Heritage; and again, "The moon's pale leprosy sloughs the fields." Dickson turned to other verses which apparently enshrined the writer's memory of the trenches.

They were largely compounded of oaths, and rather horrible, lingering lovingly over sights and smells which every one is aware of, but most people contrive to forget.

He did not like them.