De Heredia versus Dr. Seuss

Click for a better jpeg, but don't expect a better parody.

"Quelle est l'ombre qui rend plus sombre encor mon antre?"
-- From LES TROPHEÉS, 1893.

As much as I respect the sonnets of José-Maria de Heredia, I do find some of his lines (unintentionally?) funny. That question from "Sphinx" would fit right into a translated book by Dr. Seuss.

I can admire his economy of means, his control of language, his refusal to pad the sonnets with images or metaphors that do not contribute to his planned effect, but at the same time, I don't sense any person behind the words, and I feel as if his focus on classical topics were an evasion of modern life.

In contrast, when Leconte de Lisle writes about distant cultures and distant places, I do get a sense of who he is, and this impression is reinforced whenever he denounces the modernity of his time, or stares into the future and sees a world without human beings. For all of the distance and objectivity that he shows in his work, Leconte de Lisle is there in his poems, while de Heredia seems absent in the sonnets

Am I being unfair? Am I missing a nuance of personality in the work? Perhaps I am... but I can't shake this feeling of concealment, of refusal to stand forward and to be himself.