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Spring and All/Chapter I

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4609377Spring and All — Chapter I1923William Carlos Williams

CHAPTER I

Samuel Butler

The great English divine, Sam Butler, is shouting from a platform, warning us as we pass: There are two who can invent some extraordinary thing to one who can properly employ that which has been made use of before.

Enheartened by this thought THE TRADITIONALISTS OF PLAGIARISM try to get hold of the mob. They seize those nearest them and shout into their ears: Tradition! The solidarity of life!

The fight is on: These men who have had the governing of the mob through all the repetitious years resent the new order. Who can answer them? One perhaps here and there but it is an impossible situation. If life were anything but a bird, if it were a man, a Greek or an Egyptian, but it is only a bird that has eves and wings, a beak, talons and a cry that reaches to every rock's center, but without intelligence?—

The voice of the Delphic Oracle itself, what was it? A poisonous gas from a rock's cleft.

Those who led yesterday wish to hold their sway a while longer. It is not difficult to understand their mood. They have their great weapons to hand: „science", „philosophy" and most dangerous of all „art".

Meanwhile, SPRING, which has been approaching for several pages, is at last here.

—they ask us to return to the proven truths of tradition, even to the twice proven, the substantiality of which is known. Denmth and a few others do their best to point out the error, telling us that design is a function of the IMAGINATION, describing its movements, its colors—but it is a hard battle. I myself seek to enter the lists with these few notes jotted down in the midst of the action, under distracting circumstances—to remind myself (see p. 2, paragraph 1) of the truth.

III

The farmer in deep thought
is pacing through the rain
among his blank fields, with
hands in pockets,
in his head
the harvest already planted.
A cold wind ruffles the water
among the browned weeds.
On all sides
the world rolls coldly away:
black orchards
darkened by the March clouds—
leaving room for thought.
Down past the brushwood
bristling by
the rainsluiced wagonroad
looms the artist figure of
the farmer—composing
—antagonist

IV

The Easter stars are shining
above lights that are flashing—
coronal of the black—
coronal of the black—Nobody
to say it—
to say it—Nobody to say: pinholes
Thither I would carry her
among the lights—
Burst it asunder
break through to the fifty words
necessary—

a crown for her head with
caslles upon it, skyscrapers
filled with nut-chocolates—

dovetame winds—
stars of tinsel
from the great end of a cornucopia
of glass