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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
DILIGENCE IS TO MAGIC AS PROGRESS IS TO FLIGHT, by MARIANNE MOORE Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: With an elephant to ride upon-'with rings on her Last Line: Which dubs them prosaic necessities—not curios. Subject(s): Elephants | |||
WITH an elephant to ride upon—"with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes," she shall outdistance calamity anywhere she goes. Speed is not in her mind inseparable from carpets. Locomotion arose in the shape of an elephant; she clambered up and chose to travel laboriously. So far as magic carpets are concerned, she knows that although the semblance of speed may attach to scare-crows of æsthetic procedure, the substance of it is embodied in such of those tough-grained animals as have outstripped man's whim to suppose them ephemera, and have earned that fruit of their ability to endure blows, which dubs them prosaic necessities—not curios. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PETE AT THE ZOO by GWENDOLYN BROOKS IT'S HARD TO BE AN ELEPHANT by JACK PRELUTSKY WE MUST BE POLITE: 2 by CARL SANDBURG DRAWN BY STONES, BY EARTH, BY THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN IN FIRE by MARVIN BELL THE ELEPHANT IS SLOW TO MATE by DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE ELETELEPHONY by LAURA ELIZABETH HOWE RICHARDS THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT by JOHN GODFREY SAXE I MAY, I MIGHT, I MUST by MARIANNE MOORE |
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