I Feel That Poetry Is Going On

The Gray Glaze Of The Past Attacks All Know-how...

A Perfect Example Of The New Republic's Urge To Drape Itself With The Togas Of Classical Respectability.

If You Need A Certain Vitality You Can Only Supply It Yourself, Or There Comes A Point, Anyway, When No One's Actions But Your Own Seem Dramatically Convincing And Justifiable In The Plot That The Number Of Your Days Concocts.

The Term Ignorant Is Indeed Perhaps An Overstatement, Implying As It Does That Something Is Known Somewhere, Whereas In Reality We Are Not Even Sure Of This: We In Fact Cannot Aver With Any Degree Of Certainty That We Are Ignorant. Yet This Is Not So Bad; We Have At Any Rate Kept Our Open-mindedness -- That, At Least, We May Be Sure That We Have -- And Are Not In Any Danger, Or So It Seems, Of Freezing Into The Pious Attitudes Of Those True Spiritual Bigots Whose Faces Are Turned Toward Eternity And Who Therefore Can See Nothing.

The Poem Is Sad Because It Wants To Be Yours, And Cannot Be.