I Read A Statement In A Newspaper
I read a statement in a newspaper
That Twentyman, the manufacturer,
Found it was cheaper to deliver goods
By horse and lorry than by motor-truck
Or motor-van. So he had sold his trucks
To purchase horses. He dismissed those men
Who had mechanics' minds to re-employ
Drivers of horses, friends of animals.
Then life grew stronger in me because life
Had triumphed in this case and would perhaps
Finally triumph over the machine.
Even such mean commercial victory
Being better than no victory at all.
Lawstudent And Coach
Each day I sit in an ill-lighted room
To teach a boy;
For one hour by the clock great words and dreams
Are our employ.
We read St Agnes' Eve and that more fair
Eve of St Mark
At a small table up against the wall
In the half-dark.
I tell him all the wise things I have read
Concerning Keats.
'His earlier work is overfull of sense
And sensual sweets.'
I tell him all that comes into my mind
From God-knows-where,
Remark, 'In English poets Bertha's type
Is jolly rare.
She's a real girl that strains her eyes to read
And cricks her neck.
Now Madeline could pray all night nor feel
Her body's check.
And Bertha reads, p'rhaps the first reading girl
In English rhyme.'
It's maddening work to say what Keats has said
A second time.
The boy sits sideways with averted head.
His brown cheek glows.
I like his black eyes and his sprawling limbs
And his short nose.
He, feeling, dreads the splendour of the verse,
But he must learn
To write about it neatly and to quote
These lines that burn.
He drapes his soul in my obscuring words,
Makes himself fit
To go into a sunny world and take
His part in it.
'Examiners' point of view, you know,' say I,
'Is commonsense.
You must sift poetry before you can
Sift Evidence.'
