The Poet's First Rule Must Be Never

Take Your Delight In Momentariness, Walk Between Dark And Dark A Shining Space With The Grave 's Narrowness, Though Not Its Peace.

I Have Done Many Impious Things--no Great Ruler Can Do Otherwise. I Have Put The Good Of The Empire Before All Human Considerations. To Keep The Empire Free From Factions I Have Had To Commit Many Crimes.

Though Philosophers Like To Define Poetry As Irrational Fancy, For Us It Is Practical, Humorous, Reasonable Way Of Being Ourselves.

Where Nature With Accustomed Round Sweeps And Garnishes The Ground With Kindly Beauty, Warm Or Cold Alternate Seasons Never Old: Heathen, How Furiously You Rage, Cursing This Blood And Brimstone Age, How Furiously Against Your Will You Kill And Kill Again, And Kill: All Thought Of Peace Behind You Cast, Till Like Small Boys With Fear Aghast, Each Cries For God To Understand, 'i Could Not Help It, It Was My Hand.

Abstract Reason, Formerly The Servant Of Practical Human Reasons, Has Everywhere Become Its Master, And Denies Poetry Any Excuse For Existence. Though Philosophers Like To Define Poetry As Irrational Fancy, For Us It Is Practical, Humorous, Reasonable Way Of Being Ourselves. Of Never Acquiescing In A Fraud; Of Never Accepting The Secondary-rate In Poetry, Painting, Music, Love, Friends. Of Safeguarding Our Poetic Institutions Against The Encroachments Of Mechanized, Insensate, Inhumane, Abstract Rationality.