Art Is Long, And Critics Are The

The Climate Of Our Culture Is Changing. Under These New Rains, New Suns, Small Things Grow Great, And What Was Great Grows Small; Whole Species Disappear And Are Replaced.

Anyone Who Has Read Yeats's Wonderful Autobiography Will Remember His Sligo Shabby, Shadowed, Half Country And Half Sea, Full Of Confused Romance, Superstition, Poverty, Eccentricity, Unrecognized Anachronism, Passion And Ignorance And The Little Boy's Misery. Yeats Was Treated Well But Was Bitterly Unhappy; He Prayed That He Would Die, And Used Often To Say To Himself: "when You Are Grown Up, Never Talk As Grown-up People Do Of The Happiness Of Childhood.

More And More People Think Of The Critic As An Indispensable Middle Man Between Writer And Reader, And Would No More Read A Book Alone, If They Could Help It, Than Have A Baby Alone.

I Shook Myself; I Was Dreaming. As I Went To Bed The Words Of The Eighth-grade Class's Teacher, When The Class Got To Evangeline , Kept Echoing In My Ears: "we're Coming To A Long Poem Now, Boys And Girls. Now Don't Be Babies And Start Counting The Pages." I Lay There Like A Baby, Counting The Pages Over And Over, Counting The Pages.

If You Look At The World With Parted Lips And A Pure Heart, And Will The Good, Won't That Make A True And Beautiful Poem? One's Heart Tells One That It Will; And One's Heart Is Wrong. There Is No Direct Road To Parnassus.