White In The Moon The Long Road

To Justify God's Ways To Man.

They Carry Back Bright To The Coiner The Mintage Of Man,the Lads That Will Die In Their Glory And Never Be Old.

Poems Very Seldom Consist Of Poetry And Nothing Else; And Pleasure Can Be Derived Also From Their Other Ingredients. I Am Convinced That Most Readers, When They Think They Are Admiring Poetry, Are Deceived By Inability To Analyse Their Sensations, And That They Are Really Admiring, Not The Poetry Of The Passage Before Them, But Something Else In It, Which They Like Better Than Poetry.

I Am Not A Pessimist But A Pejorist (as George Eliot Said She Was Not An Optimist But A Meliorist); And That Philosophy Is Founded On My Observation Of The World, Not On Anything So Trivial And Irrelevant As Personal History.

Experience Has Taught Me, When I Am Shaving Of A Morning, To Keep Watch Over My Thoughts, Because, If A Line Of Poetry Strays Into My Memory, My Skin Bristles So That The Razor Ceases To Act.