Imitation, If It Is Not

Those Who Actually Set Out To See The Fall Of A City Or Those Who Choose To Go To A Front Line, Are Obviously Asking Themselves To What Extent They Are Cowards. But The Tests They Set Themselves - There Is A Dead Body, Can You Bear To Look At It? - Are Nothing In Comparison With The Tests That Are Sprung On Them. It Is Not The Obvious Tests That Matter (do You Go To Pieces In A Mortar Attack?) But The Unexpected Ones (here Is A Man On The Run, Seeking Your Help - Can You Face Him Honestly?).

The Voice Is Raised, And That Is Where Poetry Begins. And Even Today, In The Prolonged Aftermath Of Modernism, In Places Where "open Form" Or Free Verse Is The Orthodoxy, You Will Find A Memory Of That Raising Of The Voice In The Term "heightened Speech".

Considering The Wealth Of Poetic Drama That Has Come Down To Us From The Elizabethan And Jacobean Periods, It Is Surprising That So Little Of Any Value Has Been Added Since.

Windbags Can Be Right. Aphorists Can Be Wrong. It Is A Tough World.

A Really Interesting And Happy Time Was When I First Went To Florence As A Student And Studied Italian. I Was Living In A Pensione On An Allowance Of £40 A Month, Which Was Princely. I Did A Lot Of Work And Enjoyed Myself Immensely.