There Is One Story And One Story

New Beginnings And New Shoots Spring Again From Hidden Roots Pull Or Stab Or Cut Or Burn, Love Must Ever Yet Return.

Abstract Reason, Formerly The Servant Of Practical Human Reasons, Has Everywhere Become Its Master, And Denies Poetry Any Excuse For Existence. Though Philosophers Like To Define Poetry As Irrational Fancy, For Us It Is Practical, Humorous, Reasonable Way Of Being Ourselves. Of Never Acquiescing In A Fraud; Of Never Accepting The Secondary-rate In Poetry, Painting, Music, Love, Friends. Of Safeguarding Our Poetic Institutions Against The Encroachments Of Mechanized, Insensate, Inhumane, Abstract Rationality.

Patriotism, In The Trenches, Was Too Remote A Sentiment, And At Once Rejected As Fit Only For Civilians, Or Prisoners. A New Arrival Who Talked Patriotism Would Soon Be Told To Cut It Out.

I Don't Really Feel My Poems Are Mine At All. I Didn't Create Them Out Of Nothing. I Owe Them To My Relations With Other People.

You Mean That People Who Continue Virtuous In An Old-fashioned Way Must Inevitably Suffer In Times Like These?