Fact Is Not Truth, But A Poet

The Art Of Poetry Consists In Taking The Poem Through Draft After Draft, Without Losing Its Inspirational Magic: He Removes Everything Irrelevant Or Distracting, And Tightens Up What Is Left. Lazy Poets Never Carry Their Early Drafts Far Enough: Some Even Believe That Virtue Lies In The Original Doodle Scrawled On The Back Of An Envelope.

The Award Of A Pure Gold Medal For Poetry Would Flatter The Recipient Unduly: No Poem Ever Attains Such Carat Purity.

The Difference Between You And Her (whom I To You Did Once Prefer) Is Clear Enough To Settle: She Like A Diamond Shone, But You Shine Like An Early Drop Of Dew Poised On A Red Rose Petal. The Dew-drop Carries In Its Eye Mountain And Forest, Sea And Sky, With Every Change Of Weather; Contrariwise, A Diamond Splits The Prospect Into Idle Bits That None Can Piece Together.

When The Immense Drugged Universe Explodes In A Cascade Of Unendurable Colour And Leaves Us Gasping Naked, This Is No More Than The Ectasy Of Chaos: Hold Fast, With Both Hands, To That Royal Love Which Alone, As We Know Certainly, Restores Fragmentation Into True Being. Ecstasy Of Chaos

The Sap Of Spring In The Young Wood A-stir Will Celebrate With Green The Mother, And Every Song-bird Shout Awhile For Her; But We Are Gifted, Even In November Rawest Of Seasons, With So Huge A Sense Of Her Nakedly Worn Magnificence We Forget Cruelty And Past Betrayal, Heedless Of Where The Next Bright Bolt May Fall.