Most Works Of Art Are, Necessarily, Bad...;

There Is In This World No Line So Bad That Someone Won't Someday Copy It.

Robert Frost Says In A Piece Of Homely Doggerel That He Has Hoped Wisdom Could Be Not Only Attic But Laconic, Boeotian Even - "at Least Not Systematic"; But How Systematically Frostian The Worst Of His Later Poems Are! His Good Poems Are The Best Refutation Of, The Most Damning Comment On, His Bad: His Complete Poems Have The Air Of Being Able To Educate Any Faithful Reader Into Tearing Out A Third Of The Pages, Reading A Third, And Practically Wearing Out The Rest.

If My Tone Is Mocking, The Tone Of Someone Accustomed To Helplessness, This Is Natural: The Poet Is A Condemned Man For Whom The State Will Not Even Buy Breakfast And As Someone Said, "if You're Going To Hang Me, You Mustn't Expect To Be Able To Intimidate Me Into Sparing Your Feelings During The Execution."

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.

People Had Always Seemed To Gertrude Rather Like The Beasts In Animal Farm : All Equally Detestable, But Some More Equally Detestable Than Others.