Arthur Symons (1865–1945) occupies a curious place in English literature: a decadent who lived until the 1940s, a poet and playwright who regularly published in the Yellow Book and other fin-de-siècle magazines, and an early proponent of the use of drugs as a way to open the doors of perception. He was also the author of “The Symbolist Movement in Literature” (1899), as influential a book of literary criticism as has ever been published — introducing the likes of William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot to a new range of French poets: Arthur Rimbaud, Jules Laforgue, Stéphane Mallarmé, and all the rest who seemed to his English readers the very definition of a new poetry.

Back in 1889, however, Symons had published a sonnet called “The Opium-Smoker,” which is as stern a description of drug use as literature provides. It’s also a fine use of the turn from the octave (the first eight lines of a sonnet) to the sestet (the final six lines). In the opening, Symons pictures the opium smoker as a kind of living Egyptian mummy, subjectively swathed in cerements and wrapped in a wondrous and timeless night. And then, in a brutal volta, the poet describes the objective reality of the drug-filled life: “Also I have this garret which I rent, . . . / This crust, of which the rats have eaten part” — and more: “This soul at pawn and this delirious heart.”

The Opium‑Smoker
by Arthur Symons 

I am engulfed, and drown deliciously
Soft music like a perfume, and sweet light
Golden with audible odours exquisite,
Swathe me with cerements for eternity.
Time is no more. I pause and yet I flee.
A million ages wrap me round with night.
I drain a million ages of delight.
I hold the future in my memory.

Also I have this garret which I rent,
This bed of straw, and this that was a chair,
This worn-out body like a tattered tent,
This crust, of which the rats have eaten part,
This pipe of opium; rage, remorse, despair;
This soul at pawn and this delirious heart.

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.