The Poet Speaks To All Men Of

If Certain Critics And Poetasters Had Their Way, 'ordinary Piety' And Its Child, Dullness, Would Be The Masters Of Poetry.

As For The Usefulness Of Poetry, Its Uses Are Many. It Is The Deification Of Reality. It Should Make Our Days Holy To Us. The Poet Should Speak To All Men, For A Moment, Of That Other Life Of Theirs That They Have Smothered And Forgotten.

It Is As Unseeing To Ask What Is The Use Of Poetry As It Would Be To Ask What Is The Use Of Religion.

The Busy Chatter Of The Heat Shrilled Like A Parakeet; And Shuddering At The Noonday Light The Dust Lay Dead And White As Powder On A Mummy's Face, Or Fawned With Simian Grace Round Booths With Many A Hard Bright Toy And Wooden Brittle Joy: The Cap And Bells Of Time The Clown That, Jangling, Whistled Down Young Cherubs Hidden In The Guise Of Every Bird That Flies; And Star-bright Masks For Youth To Wear, Lest Any Dream That Fare Bright Pilgrim Past Our Ken, Should See Hints Of Reality.

The Ghost Of The Heart Of Manred Cain And The More Murderous Brain Of Man, Still Redder Nero That Conceived The Death Of His Mother Earth, And Tore Her Womb, To Know The Place Where He Was Conceived.