The Contemplative Quarry; And, the Man with a Hammer (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE SINGER If I had peace to sit and sing, Then I could make a lovely thing; But I am stung with goads and whips, So I build songs like iron ships. Let it be something for my song, If it is sometimes swift and strong. REALITY Only a starveling singer seeks The stuff of songs among the Greeks. Juno is old, Jove's loves are cold, Tales over-told. By a new risen Attic stream, A mortal singer dreamed a dream. Fixed he not Fancy's habitation, Nor set in bonds Imagination. There are new waters, and a new Humanity. For all old myths give us the dream to be. We are outwearied with Persephone, Rather than her, we'll sing Reality. THE EGOIST Shall I write pretty poetry Controlled by ordered sense in me With an old choice of figure and of word, So call my soul a nesting bird? Of the dead poets I can make a synthesis, And learn poetic form that in them is; But I will use the figure that is real For me, the figure that I feel. And now of this matter of ear-perfect rhyme, My clerk can list all language in his leisure time; A faulty rhyme may be a well-placed microtone, And hold a perfect imperfection of its own. A poet rediscovers all creation; His instinct gives him beauty, which is sensed relation. It was as fit for one man's thoughts to trot in iambs, as it is for me, Who live not in the horse-age, but in the day of aeroplanes, to write my rhythms free. TORTURED MATTER I Have no physical need of a chair; I can double my body anywhere: A suitable rest is found Upon a stone or on the ground. But it is needful that I feed my wit, With beauty and complexity, even when I sit. Had I a splendid broad philosophy, I were high man without complexity. I'd fling myself on any natural sod To scan t...