Page:Spring and all - William Carlos Williams.djvu/25

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So long as the sky is recognised as an association

is recognised in its function of accessory to vague words whose meaning it is impossible to rediscover

its value can be nothing but mathematical certain limits of gravity and density of air

The farmer and the fisherman who read their own lives there have a practical corrective for —

they rediscover or replace demoded meanings to the religious terms

Among them, without expansion of imagination, there is the residual contact between life and the imagination which is essential to freedom

The man of imagination who turns to art for release and fulfilment of his baby promises contends with the sky through layers of demoded words and shapes. Demoded, not because the essential vitality which begot them is laid waste — this cannot be so, a young man feels, since he feels it in himself