In My Stiff, Brocaded Gown. With My

Underneath My Stiffened Gown Is The Softness Of A Woman Bathing In A Marble Basin, A Basin In The Midst Of Hedges Grown So Thick, She Cannot See Her Lover Hiding, But She Guesses He Is Near, And The Sliding Of The Water Seems The Stroking Of A Dear Hand Upon Her.

Can You See Through The Night, Woman, That You Stare So Upon It? Man, What Sparks Do Your Eyes Follow In The Smouldering Darkness?

I Never Deny Poems When They Come; Whatever I Am Doing, Whatever I Am Writing, I Lay It Aside And Attend To The Arriving Poem.

Only Those Of Our Poets Who Kept Solidly To The Shakespearean Tradition Achieved Any Measure Of Success. But Keats Was The Last Great Exponent Of That Tradition, And We All Know How Thin, How Lacking In Charm, The Copies Of Keats Have Become.

Guarded Within The Old Red Wall's Embrace, Marshalled Like Soldiers In Gay Company, The Tulips Stand Arrayed. Here Infantry Wheels Out Into The Sunlight.