Between The Vision And The Act Lies

One Of The Surest Tests Of The Superiority Or Inferiority Of A Poet Is The Way In Which A Poet Borrows. Immature Poets Imitate Mature Poets Steal Bad Poets Deface What They Take And Good Poets Make It Into Something Better Or At Least Something Different. The Good Poet Welds His Theft Into A Whole Of Feeling Which Is Unique Utterly Different Than That From Which It Is Torn The Bad Poet Throws It Into Something Which Has No Cohesion. A Good Poet Will Usually Borrow From Authors Remote In Time Or Alien In Language Or Diverse In Interest.

With Cats, Some Say, One Rule Is True: Don’t Speak Till You Are Spoken To. Myself, I Do Not Hold With That — I Say, You Should Ad-dress A Cat. But Always Keep In Mind That He Resents Familiarity. I Bow, And Taking Off My Hat, Ad-dress Him In This Form: O Cat! But If He Is The Cat Next Door, Whom I Have Often Met Before (he Comes To See Me In My Flat) I Greet Him With An Oopsa Cat! I Think I've Heard Them Call Him James — But We've Not Got So Far As Names.

A People Without History Is Not Redeemed From Time, For History Is A Pattern Of Timeless Moments.

I Take As Metaphysical Poetry That In Which What Is Ordinarily Apprehensible Only By Thought Is Brought Within The Grasp Of Feeling, Or That In Which What Is Ordinarily Only Felt Is Transformed Into Thought Without Ceasing To Be Feeling.

Tennyson And Browning Are Poets, And They Think; But They Do Not Feel Their Thought As Immediately As The Odour Of A Rose. A Thought To Donne Was An Experience; It Modified His Sensibility.