How beautiful are the really hot, lovely English summer's days. They come sometimes, and they are exquisite; nothing beats them. Why, oh ! why, can I never enjoy such things without that tinge of sadness which moderns call morbidness ? It does no good, but I think of someone who is ill, or of those masses and masses of people in that dreary great city so close. As I enjoy my garden alone, with the beauty and the flowers, the flood of summer light and the intense pleasure of it, I long to do something, and longing generally resolves itself into picking flowers for somebody. This little poem by Paul Verlaine seems to give the colour of it all, and the pain: