Poem Outlines

Chapter 4: TO THE POLITICIANS

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About This Book

The book gathers brief sketches, unfinished drafts, and lyrical fragments that reveal preoccupations with nature, music, and spiritual yearning. Short outlines and condensed images move from marshland observation and elemental forces to reflections on creative process, the struggles of artistic craft, and questions of faith. Occasional narrative openings and musical metaphors show an attempt to capture fleeting inspiration, while epigrammatic lines and hymnlike passages underline a blend of scientific curiosity and devotional feeling. Editorial notes situate these pieces as intimations of larger poems left in fragmentary form.

TO THE POLITICIANS

You are servants. Your thoughts are the thoughts of cooks curious to skim perquisites from every pan, your quarrels are the quarrels of scullions who fight for the privilege of cleaning the pot with most leavings in it, your committees sit upon the landings of backstairs, and your quarrels are the quarrels of kitchens.

[1878-9]

"The Earth?" quoth a Dandelion to my Oak, "what earth? where is any? I float, and find none!"

At that moment the wind blew.

"Nevertheless, it is here," quoth my oak, with pleasure in all his roots, what time the dandelion was blown out of hearing.