To give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, that is one great office of decoration; to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce make, that is the other use of it.
Does not our subject look important enough now? I say that without these arts, our rest would be vacant and uninteresting, our labour mere endurance, mere wearing away of body and mind.
Laden Autumn here I stand
Worn of heart, and weak of hand:
Nought but rest seems good to me,
Speak the word that sets me free.
OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!
A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. — But a man may then imagine in your work what he pleases, what you never meant! — Not what he pleases, but what he can. If he be not a true man, he will draw evil out of the best; we need not mind how he treats any work of art! If he be a true man, he will imagine true things; what matter whether I meant them or not?
The Fantastic Imagination – George MacDonald
And this one’s better…
Alas! how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too deep or a kiss too long,
And then comes a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.
Phantastes – George MacDonald
If there was a Lit crush box, he’d be right up by the heart for me. =P
One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.
from Philip Massinger by T.S. Eliot Original Essay
Found via Daring Fireball and Brian Ericford and Nancy Prager.
Success turns into the resentment
that we made when we were two-
thirds of a whole; twice forgotten
in Mars’ grassy knoll, our fraction
was lost to the unknown
factions that reside underneath the soil
there and here.Unbeknownst to even the system
engineers, the citizens and…
Like the critique, love the poem.
I will say that I see a closer link with Mars, Babylon, candles and fire.
If, in the poem, we are lost and seek our home, Babylon, we must seek it by candlelight:
How Many Miles to Babylon
So the theme of war and the theme of wandering are used throughout. Candles, which could be meant to represent the studious nature in the old rhyme, must be used to find the true path. Fire/War’s tools are too clumsy/powerful. Gentle light will reveal what the flash of fire will wipe out. As the largest theme in the poem seems to be inter-personal conflict, I think that’s a great usage.
Of course, I could be ascribing meaning that wasn’t intended. :p
Feste's Lute 