Let All The Poison That Lurks In

I Do Not Love The Sabbath, The Soapsuds And The Starch, The Troops Of Solemn People Who To Salvation March. I Take My Book, I Take My Stick On The Sabbath Day, In Woody Nooks And Valleys I Hide Myself Away. To Ponder There In Quiet God's Universal Plan, Resolved That Church And Sabbath Were Never Made For Man.

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.

The Sap Of Spring In The Young Wood A-stir Will Celebrate With Green The Mother, And Every Song-bird Shout Awhile For Her; But We Are Gifted, Even In November Rawest Of Seasons, With So Huge A Sense Of Her Nakedly Worn Magnificence We Forget Cruelty And Past Betrayal, Heedless Of Where The Next Bright Bolt May Fall.

The Function Of Poetry Is Religious Invocation Of The Muse; Its Use Is The Experience Of Mixed Exaltation And Horror That Her Presence Excites.

No Poem Is Worth Anything Unless It Starts From A Poetic Trance, Out Of Which You Can Be Wakened By Interruption As From A Dream. In Fact, It Is The Same Thing.