The sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir Will celebrate with green the Mother, And every song-bird shout awhile for her; But we are gifted, even in November Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense Of Her nakedly worn magnificence We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

Mythology is the study of whatever religious or heroic legends are so foreign to a student's experience that he cannot believe them to be true. . . . Myth has two main functions. The first is to answer the sort of awkward questions that children ask, such as: 'Who made the world? How will it end? Who was the first man? Where do souls go after death?'. . . . The second function of myth is to justify an existing social system and account for traditional rites and customs.

To recommend a monarchy on account of the prosperity it gives the provinces seems to me like recommending that a man should have liberty to treat his children as slaves, if at the same time he treats his slaves with reasonable consideration.

Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.

The decline of true taste for food is the beginning of a decline in a national culture as a whole. When people have lost their authentic personal taste, they lose their personality and become the instruments of other people's wills.

Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.

The difference between you and her (whom I to you did once prefer) Is clear enough to settle: She like a diamond shone, but you Shine like an early drop of dew Poised on a red rose petal. The dew-drop carries in its eye Mountain and forest, sea and sky, With every change of weather; Contrariwise, a diamond splits The prospect into idle bits That none can piece together.