Part of the Palgravion lie was that poetry was a thing written by young men and girls. Not having access to Ezra Pound who showed that the greatest poetry was written by men over thirty, it took me many years to realize that poetry dealt with the full reality of experience.

Part also of the lie was that poetry was very sad—
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

This is not true. Our sweetest songs are those that derive from that day abandon which is the keynote of the authentic Parnassian voice. The abandon is not the riotous braggadoccio which is often associated with the poet. The true abandon and gaiety of heart spring from the sense of authority, confidence and courage of the man who is on the sacred mountain.

It is essential to consider nothing but genius; for anything less is no good. The aim of a good deal of literary and academic criticism is to raise up the mediocre, to get people to believe that the tenth-rate is in some way respectable. It takes courage not to praise the tenth-rate, for as soon as it is known by society that you are one of these mediocrity-admirers, they know that you're “all right”—a serious traditional man deserving of a stake in the country.

Poetry is what it says. The thought shapes the language. At its purest all the didacticism is burned away, and you get that impalpable beauty which pertains to the divine—

Absent thee from felicity awhile.

The wicked critic, instead of telling his audience to lift the child in its arms and enjoy its smiles, tells it to ask why it has eyes and what causes the smile.

One can never get away from the idea of the Audience in discussing the poet. The audience stands outside the hotch-potch of lies that is the world of journalism and politics. In London the journalist has no influence on literature. In England there has always been a traditional audience, a word-of-mouth audience. That audience cannot be bought, is uninfluenced in finnancial success or failure.

Great men are not concerned with whether or not their work is involved in the ephemeral. Only bad, silly writers are worried over such matters. They hope that a “mighty theme” will save them, because they do not know that the only permanent thing is the soul, and what has happened to it.

Art McCooey, a late 18th century poet, is known for a poem he wrote on Creggan graveyard. But as is the case with so much that passes for poetry in Ireland, it is whimsical. He does not, as the true poet does, name and name and name with love the obscure places, people or events. To the poet, what is loved is worthy of love. A better poet than McCooey was Evelyn Shirley, a nineteenth century landlord from South Ulster, and he wrote no verse at all as far as is known. But in his History of Monaghan he names and names and names in the true poetic fashion. He recorded the history of the obscure fields, graves forths and families, with all the Parnassian disregard for any supposed public. He had an audience, no doubt, of a few of his friends.

There is only one Muse, the Comic Muse. In Tragedy there is always something of a lie. Great poetry is always comic in the profound sense. The only plays of Shakespeare which are less than comic are the alleged comedies. King Lear is the pure incantation of the Comic Muse. Comedy is the abundance of life

O, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous:
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life's as cheap as beast's—