YOU ask a rhymeless sonnet since, you say, The world's untuned and discords jar the soul, And hopes are fallen, purpose fickle; so A broken shape is best for poetry That would our day interpret to itself. —But what has poetry to do with lies, Delusions, and the misery of self-love, That it should match the misery by its own? Poetry is the body given by strong Imagination to the waste of life, The wheel on which the perfect bowl is shaped To hold the ashes of forgotten folk; The shell that keeps a heavenly air unbroken, Words of a tongue that else had died unspoken. |