INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR
How, like a sad thought buried in light [woven] words,
Winter, an alien presence, is ambushed here.
See from the fire-fountained noon there creep
Lazy yellow ardours towards pale evening,
Dragging the sun across the shell of thought;
A web threaded with fading fire;
Futile and fragile lure, a July ghost
Standing with feet of fire on banks of ice,
My frozen heart, the summer cannot reach—
Hidden as a root from air, or star from day,
A frozen pool whereon mirth dances,
Where the shining boys would fish.
To Edward Marsh (1914).
"I believe that all poets who are personal see things genuinely—have their place. One needn't be a Shakespeare and yet be quite as interesting. I have moods when Rossetti satisfies me more than Shakespeare, and I am sure I have enjoyed some things of Francis Thompson more than the best of Shakespeare. Yet I never meant to go as high as these. I know I've come across things by people of far inferior vision that were as important in their results to me. I am not going to refute your criticisms; in literature I have no judgment, at least for style. If in reading a thought has expressed itself to me in beautiful words, my ignorance of grammar, etc., makes me accept that.
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