And Malt Does More Than Milton Can

How Clear, How Lovely Bright, How Beautiful To Sight Those Beams Of Morning Play; How Heaven Laughs Out With Glee Where, Like A Bird Set Free, Up From The Eastern Sea Soars The Delightful Day. To-day I Shall Be Strong, No More Shall Yield To Wrong, Shall Squander Life No More; Days Lost, I Know Not How, I Shall Retrieve Them Now; Now I Shall Keep The Vow I Never Kept Before. Ensanguining The Skies How Heavily It Dies Into The West Away; Past Touch And Sight And Sound Not Further To Be Found, How Hopeless Under Ground Falls The Remorseful Day.

Mithridates, He Died Old. Housman's Passage Is Based On The Belief Of The Ancients That Mithridates The Great [c. 135-63 B.c.] Had So Saturated His Body With Poisons That None Could Injure Him. When Captured By The Romans He Tried In Vain To Poison Himself, Then Ordered A Gallic Mercenary To Kill Him.

On Occasions, After Drinking A Pint Of Beer At Luncheon, There Would Be A Flow Into My Mind With Sudden And Unaccountable Emotion, Sometimes A Line Or Two Of Verse, Sometimes A Whole Stanza, Accompanied, Not Preceded By A Vague Notion Of The Poem Which They Were Destined To Form A Part Of.... I Say Bubble Up Because, So Far As I Could Make Out, The Source Of The Suggestions Thus Proffered To The Brain Was The Pit Of The Stomach.

Great Literature Should Do Some Good To The Reader: Must Quicken His Perception Though Dull, And Sharpen His Discrimination Though Blunt, And Mellow The Rawness Of His Personal Opinions.

And Silence Sounds No Worse Than Cheers After Earth Has Stopped The Ears.