, critic
and magazine editor.
Born in Milford Haven
, Wales
, of Cornish
parents, Symons was educated privately, spending much of his time in France
and Italy
. In 1884–1886 he edited four of Bernard Quaritch
's Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles, and in 1888–1889 seven plays of the "Henry Irving
" Shakespeare
. He became a member of the staff of the Athenaeum
in 1891, and of the Saturday Review
in 1894, but his major editorial feat was his work with the short-lived Savoy
.
His first volume of verse, Days and Nights (1889), consisted of dramatic monologues.
The gray-green stretch of sandy grass,Indefinitely desolate;A sea of lead, a sky of slate;Already autumn in the air, alas!One stark monotony of stone,The long hotel, acutely white,Against the after-sunset lightWithers gray-green, and takes the grass's tone.
My soul is like this cloudy, flaming opal ring.
Here in a little lonely roomI am master of earth and sea,And the planets come to me.
Criticism is properly the rod of divination: a hazel switch for the discovery of buried treasure, not a birch twig for the castigation of offenders.
What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves.... He must have the passion of a lover.
I have loved colours, and not flowers;Their motion, not the swallows wings;And wasted more than half my hoursWithout the comradeship of things.
I heard the sighing of the reedsAt noontide and at evening,And some old dream I had forgottenI seemed to be remembering.
They weave a slow andante as in sleep,Scaled yellow, swampy black, plague-spotted white;With blue and lidless eyes at watch they keepA treachery of silence; infinite.
The gipsy tents are on the down,The gipsy girls are here;And it's O to be off and away from the townWith a gipsy for my dear!
My life is like a music-hall,Where, in the impotence of rage,Chained by enchantment to my stall,I see myself upon the stageDance to amuse a music-hall.