The Egoist

Shall I write pretty poetry Controlled by ordered sense in me With an old choice of figure and of word, So call my soul a nesting bird?

Of the dead poets I can make a synthesis, And learn poetic form that in them is; But I will use the figure that is real For me, the figure that I feel.

And now of this matter of ear-perfect rhyme, My clerk can list all language in his leisure time; A faulty rhyme may be a well-placed microtone, And hold a perfect imperfection of its own.

A poet rediscovers all creation; His instinct gives him beauty, which is sensed relation. It was as fit for one man's thoughts to trot in iambs, as it is for me. Who live not in the horse-age, but in the day of aeroplanes, to write my rhythms free.