Poetry Is Not The Thing Said, But

Because I Liked You Better Than Suits A Man To Say, It Irked You, And I Promised I'd Throw The Thought Away. To Put The World Between Us We Parted Stiff And Dry: 'farewell,' Said You, 'forget Me.' 'fare Well, I Will,' Said I. If E'er, Where Clover Whitens The Dead Man's Knoll, You Pass, And No Tall Flower To Meet You Starts In The Trefoiled Grass, Halt By The Headstone Shading The Heart You Have Not Stirred, And Say The Lad That Loved You Was One That Kept His Word.

I Think That To Transfuse Emotion - Not To Transmit Thought But To Set Up In The Reader's Sense A Vibration Corresponding To What Was Felt By The Writer - Is The Peculiar Function Of Poetry.

There, By The Starlit Fences The Wanderer Halts And Hears My Soul That Lingers Sighing About The Glimmering Weirs.

Oh, 'tis Jesting, Dancing, Drinking Spins The Heavy World Around.

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.