A Letter to a Live Poet

Where is it now? Oh, more than ever, now

I sometimes think no poetry is read

Save where some sepultured Caesura bled,

Royally incarnadining all the line.

Is the imperial iamb laid to rest,

And the young trochee, having done enough?

Ah! turn again! Sing so to us, who are sick

Of seeming-simple rhymes, bizarre emotions,

Decked in the simple verses of the day,

Infinite meaning in a little gloom,

Irregular thoughts in stanzas regular,

Modern despair in antique metres, myths

Incomprehensible at evening,

And symbols that mean nothing in the dawn.

The slow lines swell. The new style sighs. The Celt

Moans round with many voices.