Many Of The Men Who Had Come

My First Reading Of Tolstoy Affected Me As A Revelation From Heaven, As The Trumpet Of The Judgment. What He Made Me Feel Was Notthe Desire To Imitate, But The Conviction That Imitation Was Futile.

It Seems To Me That This Is The True Test For Poetry: - That It Should Go Beneath Experience, As Prose Can Never Do, And Awaken An Apprehension Of Things We Have Never, And Can Never, Know In The Actuality.

And Where Was Happiness If It Sprung Not From The Soil? Where Contentment If It Dwelt Not Near To Nature?

Of One Thing Alone I Am Very Sure: It Is A Law Of Our Nature That The Memory Of Longing Should Survive The More Fugitive Memory Of Fulfillment.

Pessimism Is The Affectation Of Youth, The Reality Of Age.