The Immature Poet Imitates, The

We Must Believe That "emotion Recollected In Tranquillity" Is An Inexact Formula. For It Is Neither Emotion, Nor Recollection, Nor Without Distortion Of Meaning, Tranquillity. It Is A Concentration, And A New Thing Resulting From The Concentration Of A Very Great Number Of Experiences Which To The Practical And Active Person Would Not Seem To Be Experiences At All; It Is A Concentration Which Does Not Happen Consciously Or Of Deliberation. These Experiences Are Not "recollected" And They Finally Unite In An Atmosphere Which Is "tranquil" Only In That It Is A Passive Attending Upon The Event.

I Confess . . . That I Am Not Myself Very Much Concerned With The Question Of Influence, Or With Those Publicists Who Have Impressed Their Names Upon The Public By Catching The Morning Tide And Rowing Very Vast In The Direction In Which The Current Was Flowing; But Rather That There Should Always Be A Few Writers Preoccupied In Penetrating To The Core Of The Matter, In Trying To Arrive At The Truth And To Set It Forth, Without Too Much Hope, Without Ambition To Alter The Immediate Course Of Affairs, And Without Being Downcast Or Defeated When Nothing Appears To Ensue.

We Might Remind Ourselves That Criticism Is As Inevitable As Breathing, And That We Should Be None The Worse For Articulating What Passes In Our Minds When We Read A Book And Feel An Emotion About It, For Criticizing Our Own Minds In Their Work Of Criticism.

These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins

Here I Am, An Old Man In A Dry Month, Being Read To By A Boy, Waiting For Rain.